About 60 nations pledged Tuesday to refrain from the illegal and unacceptable use of child soldiers in armed conflicts during the second day of Free Children from War , a global conference in Paris. Hosted by the French Foreign Ministry and UNICEF , the conference adopted the Paris Commitments and formally unveiled the more extensive [...]

A proposed bill on corporate manslaughter came to a standstill in the UK House of Lords on Monday when Conservative and Liberal Democrats voted for an amendment which broadened the scope of the law to include deaths in prisons and police cells. The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill was proposed by the government to [...]

The government of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) promised to continue fighting to adopt legislation that would grant legal recognition to same-sex partnerships after Australia's attorney general recommended Tuesday that the country's federal government overturn a proposed civil unions law for the second time. In December 2006, ACT Attorney General Simon Corbell introduced the Civil [...]

The US military judge in the court-martial of 1st Lt. Ehren Watada prohibited international and constitutional law scholars from testifying Monday about the legality of the war. Watada faces charges of missing movement and conduct unbecoming an officer for his refusal to be deployed to Iraq with his unit in June 2006. Last month, the [...]

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law Monday a bill moving the Russian Constitutional Court from its current Moscow location to St. Petersburg. The bill received final parliamentary approval last month with a 147-2 vote in Russia's Federation Council to continue working from a Moscow base. Putin, a St. Petersburg native, has previously said that [...]

Efforts by Russian prosecutors to bring new charges against jailed oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky raise "serious questions about the rule of law in Russia," US State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack said during a press briefing Monday. Prosecutors charged the former Yukos CEO with money laundering and embezzlement Monday based on allegations that Khodorkovsky used his [...]

Archbishop of York John Sentamu criticized the British government Monday for its latest effort to extend the current 28-day maximum detention period for terror suspects . UK Home Secretary John Reid said last week that in light of the complexity of the investigation of the August transatlantic airplane bombing plot he would renew efforts to [...]

The Canadian government has violated native Canadian children's human rights by underfunding child-welfare services for native peoples, according to the Canadian Assembly of First Nations (AFN) . The group plans to file a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission this month against the federal government, alleging that the government has not adequately funded welfare [...]

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Monday urged the government of Lebanon to ratify an agreement with the UN to create a UN-supported international tribunal to try suspects accused of assassinating former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005. The agreement was signed by Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Saniora last week and is now with the [...]

An American Bar Association (ABA) panel has proposed revisions to its judicial code of conduct so that judges are advised to avoid impropriety but would no longer be subject to formal discipline for failing to do so. In the rewritten ABA Model Code of Judicial Conduct , judges are still instructed to "avoid impropriety and [...]