Samuel Abiodun Adebowale : "In Chicago (USA), a U.S. District Court admitted a claim to investigate the responsibility of a former Nigerian head of state, Gen. Abubakar Abdulsalami, for gross violation of human rights in Nigeria between November 1993 and May 1999. The case was filed by some Nigerian victims under Abubakar's regime. The court [...]

Italian Judge Oscar Magi on Wednesday ordered the continuation of the trial of 26 Americans and several former Italian intelligence officials for the 2003 abduction and rendition of Egyptian cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr . Magi suspended the trial in October pending a ruling from the Constitutional Court of Italy on a petition filed by [...]

US Magistrate Judge John Facciola Tuesday ordered the White House to explain why it should not be required to create forensic copies of all e-mails passed through computers in the Executive Office of the President between March 2003 to October 2005. In his order, Facciola referred to a January admission by the White House that [...]

The US Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a Louisiana death sentence should be overturned because the trial judge "committed clear error" in ruling on the defendant's objection to a prosecution peremptory jury challenge, which the defendant argued was based on race. The ruling came in Snyder v. Louisiana , where Allen Snyder was convicted and [...]

Germany's Federal Constitutional Court on Wednesday placed an injunction on a federal law that gave the government the ability to access and collect Internet and telephone data. The law, which went into effect in January, allowed the government to collect information such as e-mail addresses, numbers dialed, and lengths of calls from service providers. The [...]

Lawyers for the current acting Fijian government argued in court Wednesday that the December military coup was legal because Fijian President Ratu Josefa Iloilo had reserve powers that permitted the president to dismiss the government and appoint new leaders. Former Fijian Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase brought the lawsuit against the acting government, saying that the [...]

A lawyer representing a group of Illinois pharmacists asked the state supreme court Tuesday to strike down a 2005 emergency rule issued by Illinois Governor Rod Blogjevich which requires pharmacies to fill prescriptions for contraceptives, including emergency contraception. During oral arguments , the pharmacists' lawyer argued that the rule requires them to dispense drugs contrary [...]

The Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights has filed a complaint with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, part of the Organization of American States , against Mexico, alleging that the Mexican government failed to adequately respond to the 1974 disappearance of guerrilla sympathizer Rosendo Radilla during Mexico's so-called "dirty war" [...]

JURIST Contributing Editor Mary Ellen O'Connell of Notre Dame Law School says that five years after the invasion of Iraq, with talk of a new war with Iran circulating in Washington, the United States would do well to reflect on the grave and unfortunate consequences of flouting international law… On this fifth anniversary of the [...]

US Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings Tuesday announced a new pilot program under the federal No Child Left Behind program that is aimed at narrowing statewide education reform to focus on schools most in need of "dramatic intervention": One thing we know for sure is that we must take dramatic action to improve our lowest-performing [...]