Search Results for: 2017-02-01

The Associated Press (AP) released an exclusive report Thursday revealing a secret US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) spying program that targeted top Venezuelan officials, including Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, despite the program’s potential illegality under international law. According to AP, the program, internally referred to as Operation Money Badger, has been ongoing since at least [...]

The current conflict engulfing Israel and Palestine raises significant issues of international law and policy. This is part one in an anticipated two-part series that will discuss some of the relevant legal questions before the International Criminal Court (ICC; Part I) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ; Part II).  With both courts located in [...]

Philippines President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. reaffirmed on Tuesday that the country would not cooperate with the investigation undertaken by the International Criminal Court (ICC) into the previous administration’s “war on drugs,” led by its former president Rodrigo Duterte, which allegedly took the lives of over 12,000 Filipinos. The Philippines became a party to the Rome Statute, [...]

A US federal judge prohibited the practice of separating migrant children from their families for eight years on Friday following a settlement that will allow migrant children and their families, who were separated at the US-Mexico border, to be reunited. The “Mrs. L” deal, the result of a lawsuit against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement [...]

This weekend marks the 75th anniversary of one of the world’s most groundbreaking global pledges: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). On December 9 we see the anniversary of the Genocide Convention, signed on the December 9, 1948, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights signed 75 years ago. It represents an an important occasion that aims to raise [...]

The US granted Mexican journalist Emilio Gutiérrez Soto asylum on Thursday after a 15-year battle. Gutiérrez Soto had to flee Mexico in 2008 after his critical reporting on the Mexican military drew negative attention from Mexican authorities. Since then, Gutiérrez Soto has fought to obtain safe asylum status in the US.   Appellate Immigration Judge O’Connor [...]

US District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan dismissed former President Donald Trump’s counter-defamation suit against author E. Jean Carroll on Monday. Carroll has accused Trump of sexual assault, with a jury finding that Trump did sexually assault Carroll and defamed Carroll by accusing her of lying. Trump claimed that Carroll’s statements on CNN after the verdict [...]

The International Criminal Court (ICC) announced Thursday it would open a preliminary examination into alleged war crimes in the North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The government of the DRC previously made a formal request to the tribunal to examine activities of particular armed forces and groups in the region. Prosecutor [...]

Access to justice is a foundational principle of the rule of law and is often phrased as requiring “the right of equal access to justice for all” through governments providing “fair, transparent, effective, non-discriminatory and accountable services.” In Australia, this principle was described in Dietrich v. The Queen as “the equal justice for all principle.” [...]

This article is the second in a series covering attacks on the rule of law. The rule of law is a political philosophy premised on the promise that all citizens, leaders, and institutions are accountable to the same laws, guaranteed through processes, practices, and norms that work together to support the equality of all citizens [...]