A proposed anti-terror bill that would allow British law enforcement authorities to detain terror suspects without charge for up to 42 days should not be passed as it could set a bad precedent for other countries, the Council of Europe's Commissioner for Human Rights said during a BBC Radio 4 interview Monday. Commissioner Thomas Hammarberg [...]

A federal judge in the US District Court for the Central District of California Monday sentenced leading class-action securities lawyer Melvyn Weiss to 30 months in prison and ordered him to pay over $10 million in fines and forfeitures. The former Milberg Weiss partner pleaded guilty in April to one count of racketeering conspiracy related [...]

Bonnie Docherty : "The pound of a gavel Friday ushered in a new era of international humanitarian law (IHL) and marked the beginning of the end for a weapon that has caused tens of thousands of civilian casualties over the past 40 years. Without a single objection, 111 states attending a negotiating conference in Dublin [...]

The UN's new Universal Periodic Review has made great strides in protecting human rights but still has far to go, departing UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour said in her last address to the UN Human Rights Council Monday. Despite gains in safeguarding rights, Arbour noted that discrimination against women and ethnic, religious [...]

Australian advocacy group International Criminal Court Action (ICCACTION) sent a brief to the International Criminal Court (ICC) Friday requesting charges be laid against former Australian Prime Minister John Howard for war crimes in connection with his deployment of Australian troops to support the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. The brief alleges Howard committed crimes in [...]

A federal judge in California subpoenaed a Washington Times reporter Saturday, ordering him to reveal the government sources he used for a 2006 story about a Chinese spy ring. Defense and national security reporter William Gertz cited unnamed US government sources in a May 2006 story , which reported that Justice Department officials had approved [...]

Aleksandra (Sasha) Williams, Pitt Law '10, files from Kiev: The last five years have dramatically changed the appearance of Kiev, the fabled "Cradle of the Slavs". Always admired for its green parks and gardens, its sensible city structure, and its historical sites preservation efforts, the city has now joined the ranks of randomly designed post-Soviet [...]

Several Russian gay rights activists were arrested by police in Moscow Sunday for holding events commemorating the 1993 law that put an end to government prosecution for homosexual activity in Russia. For the third consecutive year, Moscow Pride held events around the city to elude officials attempting to enforce a local ban on gay pride [...]

US federal authorities are prosecuting significantly more illegal immigrants than in past years, at least partly because of a 2005 zero-tolerance initiative allowing agents to charge almost all illegal immigrants with minor crimes, according to a report released May 22 by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse . Monthly immigration prosecutions based on February 2008 [...]

The US Supreme Court handed down three decisions Monday, including United States v. Santos , where the Court held 7-2 that the term "proceeds" in a federal money laundering statute means "profits" and not "receipts." Santos had successfully collaterally attacked his conviction under the statute because the government did not prove that he used profits [...]