Search Results for: 2014-05-07

Civil action and criminal prosecution are the two great substitutes invented by law to replace revenge, a deeply wired instinct among humans expressed in a Mesopotamian maxim, an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. In Pakistan, most ironically, civil litigation and criminal prosecution have become the revenge instrument, particularly among ruling elites fighting [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) Tuesday published a call for India to end its controversial sedition law. The sedition law is a statute from the colonial era when India was controlled by the United Kingdom. According to HRW, the law “remains a powerful tool used by the authorities to criminalise dissent and arrest peaceful critics of [...]

North Korea’s government Wednesday recognized two breakaway states claiming internationally-recognized Ukrainian territory as independent. North Korea is the third country to recognize the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic, after Russia and Syria. Ukraine, and much of the international community, recognizes them as part of Ukraine. On February 22, two days before Russia [...]

On December 17, 2010, a vegetable vendor in Tunisia set himself ablaze in open defiance of police harassment, igniting the spark for a wave of democratic revolutions that spread like wildfire across the Arab world. In the decade since the revolutions swept the region, Tunisia has stood out as a success story, being the only [...]

The US Supreme Court ruled Friday in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that there is no constitutional right to abortion, overturning the landmark decisions in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The decision comes in a case involving a Mississippi law banning all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Mississippi’s Gestational Age [...]

Former Canadian Supreme Court Justice Louise Arbour Monday released a long-awaited report recommending that all sexual offenses committed by Canadian military personnel should be prosecuted in civilian courts instead of military tribunals. The report also calls on the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) to conduct demographic reviews for alleviating the over-representation of white males in leadership positions, [...]

Law students and young lawyers in Ukraine are filing for JURIST on the latest developments in that country as it defends itself against Russian invasion. Here, Kyiv-based lawyer and University of Pittsburgh LLM graduate Yaroslav Pavliuk reports.   As Ukraine enters the eighth week of Russian military aggression, the cost of the war rises dramatically. In [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported Thursday “gross negligence” and violations of due process in the investigations of four politically sensitive murders that reveal donations failed to strengthen the rule of law in Lebanon. This comes a year after the assassination of pro-democracy activist Lokman Slim. The four murders were of Byblos Bank ethics department head [...]

On June 7, at a public hearing, Representative Ilhan Omar asked Secretary of State Tony Blinken where the victims of alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity could go to seek justice if domestic prosecutors won’t pursue cases in court. Omar had noted the Biden administration’s opposition to the International Criminal Court (ICC)’s Afghanistan and [...]

Human rights activist and lawyer Semyon Simonov was convicted under Russia’s foreign agents law in a controversial criminal trial on Sunday. In December 2016, Russia designated the Southern Human Rights Center (SHRC) as a foreign agent, considering it to be engaging in political activity. The SHRC is an organization providing pro bono legal services on [...]