A former Nigerien slave appeared before the Community Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS) Monday, alleging that the government of Niger failed to fully enforce a 2003 law criminalizing the ownership of slaves. Hadijatou Mani Koraou, sold into slavery at the age of 12 in 1996, accuses the Nigerien [...]

JURIST Special Guest Columnist Shayana Kadidal, senior managing attorney of the Guantanamo project at the Center for Constitutional Rights, says that the recently-released 2003 DOJ memo on military interrogations written by then deputy assistant attorney general John Yoo was no exercise in blue-sky hypothesizing, but rather one of a series of key government memos – [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist John Cerone of New England School of Law says that while we are accustomed to seeing the US president wrap himself in the US flag to avoid the restraints of international law, his posture in recent cases reveals that he occasionally dons the UN banner as well, perhaps for inverse purposes…. Earlier [...]

Sabin P. Willett : "For years, lawyers for Guantanamo detainees have argued that the "evidence" on which their clients were held is remarkably flimsy. On Friday, April 4, 2008, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit got its first close look at the proposition, hearing arguments in Parhat v. Gates, [...]

The Harare High Court on Sunday postponed until Monday its decision on whether it will order Zimbabwe's Electoral Commission to release the results of the nation's March 29 presidential elections, after hearing arguments in a lawsuit brought by opposition party Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) seeking immediate release of the results. Independent observers say that [...]

The Iraqi Council of Representatives will likely consider this week two new draft reform bills attempting to solidify the nation's oil law , Energy Committee Chairman Abdul-Hadi al-Hassani said Saturday. Under the first draft law, the state-run and government-funded Iraqi National Oil Company will be reestablished to operate alongside the North Oil Company and South [...]

The ruling Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) , led by Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe , on Sunday demanded a recount of the March 29th presidential election , amid opposition party Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) accusations that the move is illegal. The MDC defeated ZANU-PF in the parliamentary vote, but the Electoral [...]

Pakistan People's Party (PPP) spokesman Farhatullah Babar dismissed suggestions Saturday that the party was wavering on its commitment to restore judges fired by President Pervez Musharraf . Influential Pakistan newspaper The News reported Saturday that "the issue of restoration of the deposed judges is already causing cracks and friction not only in the grand political [...]

Former Afghan parliamentarian Malalai Joya said Saturday that she has hired a lawyer and is now fighting her controversial May 2007 removal from the Wolesi Jirga , the lower house of the Afghan parliament . Joya was expelled after she compared the parliament to a stable in a private television interview. In a petition filed [...]

The Harare High Court on Saturday postponed a hearing on a lawsuit seeking to compel the country's Electoral Commission to release the results of last Saturday's elections after lawyers for Zimbabwean opposition party Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) were barred from entering the court. Armed police blocked the entrance to the court and forced journalists [...]