US District Judge Lawrence Karlton said Monday that the state of California has six months to remedy overcrowding in the state's prison system, which is 70 percent overcapacity with 173,000 total inmates, before he will decide whether to establish a three-member judicial panel to make recommendations to fix the problem. Karlton said he was giving [...]

The US Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Portland has settled child sex abuse lawsuits with about 150 people, court-appointed mediators US District Judge Michael Hogan and Oregon Circuit Judge Lyle Velure announced Monday. They reported that "the vast majority of the known tort claims were settled… the Archdiocese has agreed to pay…the few remaining unresolved known [...]

Outgoing UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Monday urged the US not to abandon "its own ideals and objectives" in the war against terrorism, stressing that "human rights and the rule of law are vital to global security and prosperity." In his last speech as secretary-general, delivered at the Truman Presidential Library in Missouri, Annan also [...]

A federal judge has accepted the prosecution's latest proposal to limit the amount of detail former vice presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby can introduce at trial concerning classified intelligence. In a sealed ruling Monday, US District Judge Reggie Walton tempered an earlier ruling that Libby must be allowed to present certain classified evidence to [...]

An Italian court has set a hearing for January 9 to determine whether to issue indictments for over 30 US and Italian intelligence agents in the alleged kidnapping and extraordinary rendition of Egyptian cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr . Italian prosecutors last week asked a judge to issue indictments for 26 US Central Intelligence Agency [...]

Human Rights Watch urged China Monday to "repeal restrictions on lawyers handling collective disputes and representing protesters." In a new report , HRW slammed rules adopted by the government-controlled All China Lawyers Association in March, which place restrictions on lawyers representing plaintiffs in cases brought by 10 or more people. The Guiding Opinions on Lawyers [...]

The US Supreme Court handed down decisions in two cases Monday, including Carey v. Musladin , where the Court held that a federal appeals court improperly overturned a state court ruling allowing a murder victim's family to wear buttons depicting the victim's face during a criminal trial. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth [...]

Over 20,000 people protested in Pakistan Sunday calling on the government to withdraw new legislation that allows rape cases to be tried in either secular or Islamic courts. The Protection of Women Bill, signed by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf earlier this month, amends portions of the Hudood Ordinances , which limited rape action to Islamic [...]

Thousands of Romanian prisoners protested Sunday demanding improved conditions in overcrowded prisons after a bill was rejected last week by a committee of the Romanian Parliament . The bill would have granted early release to approximately 10,000 prisoners with less than five-year sentences. Nearly 6,000 inmates in 24 prisons across Romania refused food, set fire [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Chandra Lekha Sriram, Chair of Human Rights at the University of East London School of Law (UK), says that while the legal pursuit of late Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet in recent years represented a step forward for human rights law, his death without facing trial reflects its continuing limitations… Augusto Pinochet [...]