In June the Brazilian government issued an official apology [JURIST report] to more than 120 former political prisoners of the military regime. In May a freedom of information law took effect in the country to increase government transparency on the same day that President Dilma Rousseff swore in a truth commission [JURIST reports] to investigate war crimes during the military regime's era. Rights groups, including Amnesty International [advocacy website] have encouraged the country to revoke the amnesty law [JURIST report], and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights [official website, in Spanish] found it to be invalid [JURIST report] in 2010. This, however, was after the Brazil Supreme Court ruled to reject a motion [NYT report] by the Brazilian Bar Association to modify the law to allow trial for officials accused of human rights abuses, stating that the law should not be modified by the court because it was originally passed by the whole country.

The second case, Descamps v. US [docket; cert. petition, PDF], is a challenge to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit's use of Matthew Descamps' state burglary conviction to convict him of burglary under federal law. Descamp is challenging the federal court's use of his burglary conviction in sentencing because the California statute under which he was convicted does not include one element of "generic burglary," but the federal court read that element into the state statute saying the statute was actually broader than generic burglary. There have been conflicting lower court rulings on whether a federal court can supply an element of a crime that is not written into it through a "modified categorical approach." Using this approach, the court only looks at a limited number of documents to determine whether the defendant was convicted of the elements of the generic crime even though the state statute is broad and overinclusive. These cases will likely be heard in the Court's November-December sitting which begins on November 26.

Over the past several weeks federal courts throughout the country have blocked or voided new voting rules seeking to restrict early voting and other processes related to elections. On Thursday a three-judge panel in the US District Court for the District of Columbia unanimously rejected [JURIST report] a Texas law requiring voters to present photo identification to election officials before casting their ballots. And this past Tuesday a judge for the US District Court for the Northern District of Florida blocked [JURIST report] Florida from implementing a portion of its controversial voting law that shortens the deadlines for groups conducting voter registration drives to submit registration forms to the state. On Monday a judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio blocked [JURIST report] a state election law adopted in 2006 that discards provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct. In mid-August the US District Court for the District of Columbia declined to approve [JURIST report] changes to Florida election law that would have reduced the number of early voting days in five of the state's 67 counties.

Tensions have been simmering in the Ivory Coast between supporters of Ouattara and Gbagbo since a disputed election took place in 2010. The Ivory Coast's commission of inquiry into the country's 2010 post-election violence [JURIST news archive] submitted a report to Ouattara in early August revealing that hundreds of fighters on both sides of the post-election hostilities committed war crimes [JURIST report] and human rights violations. Following the disputed November 2010 election pro-Ouattara forces clashed with forces loyal to former president Gbagbo, who refused to concede after Ouattara was declared the winner. The commission to investigate the post-election hostilities was established [JURIST report] in July 2011. Gbagbo is currently facing charges [JURIST report] before the International Criminal Court (ICC) [official website].