The Constitutional Court of Hungary Monday ruled that two proposals passed by the country's parliament to criminalize hate speech were unconstitutional infringements on the freedom of expression. The court held that the extremist speech that the amendments sought to prevent was not a danger to society because it was already marginalized. The first bill, passed [...]

Polish President Lech Kaczynski Tuesday refused to sign the EU reform treaty , properly known as the Treaty of Lisbon , saying that to do so would be "pointless" after Irish voters rejected the treaty in a June referendum. The treaty's future has been uncertain since the Irish vote, as the instrument requires that all [...]

Ieng Sary , former Foreign Minister during the Khmer Rouge regime , appeared before the Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia (ECCC) for the second day Tuesday to appeal his detention on genocide charges. Lawyers for Sary, whose appearance at the ECCC had been set last weekend , have asked for his release due [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit brought by Canadian citizen Maher Arar , who sought a declaratory judgment against US government officials for deporting him to Syria. The court ruled that Arar had failed to state a claim for which it had jurisdiction to grant relief: We do [...]

Huzaifa Parhat v. Robert M. Gates, et al., US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, June 20, 2008 . Read the declassified text of the decision . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

The man suspected of killing Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya has fled to Western Europe, an investigator at the Russian Prosecutor General's Office said Tuesday. In May, Russian authorities named Chechen Rustam Makhmudov as the main suspect in the murder, charging him in absentia and issuing an international warrant for his arrest. In June, authorities formally [...]

A French court Monday ordered Internet auction house eBay to pay $63 million in damages to LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH) , finding that the website failed to prevent the sale of counterfeit luxury goods that infringed on registered designs. LVMH praised the holding as a victory for designers seeking to control the distribution [...]

A Chinese reporter for US-based Chinese news website Boxun.com received a four-year prison sentence Tuesday in Nanjing on charges of illegal weapons possession and public disorder. Sun Lin, who writes under the pen name Jie Mu, has reported on sensitive topics including crime, police brutality, and corruption in China, and Boxun said Sun was being [...]

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) filed papers in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida Monday asking the court to force a Swiss bank to hand over the names of American clients suspected of hiding funds from tax collectors. The DOJ is requesting permission for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to [...]

Nearly $100 million in annual funding is needed to fix California's "dysfunctional" prison system, according to a state commission's report released Monday. The California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice (CCFAJ) was asked to evaluate instances of wrongful convictions and to make informed recommendations for future changes. The CCFAJ report found: The system is [...]