The Virginia State Senate approved a constitutional amendment on Friday that removes the prohibition on same-sex marriage with a vote of 22-12. The amendment is to Section 15-A of Article I of the Virginia Constitution, which recognized as a valid marriage only a union between a man and a woman. It failed to recognize any [...]

Long-time critic of the Russian government Alexei Navalny on Saturday lost the appeal of his conviction on parole violations. Navalny was jailed for the violations earlier this month after he was found guilty of failing to report from August 2020 to January 2021. During that time period, Navalny was in Germany recovering from an attempt [...]

The Spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Liz Throssell in a statement made on Friday expressed the threat to judicial independence in Haiti. The statement was made in response to the arbitrary arrest of a Supreme Court judge and 22 other people on February 7, 2021. Moreover, the ordinary procedure was not [...]

JURIST EXCLUSIVE – The death toll from protests in Mandalay on Saturday when police and soldiers opened fire on protesters has now increased to seven, with many more reported injured. One of JURIST’s law student correspondents in Mandalay – who was actually in the vicinity of the shooting – files this report: Today at Gaw [...]

The Malaysian Kuala Lumpur high court on Thursday ordered Rosmah Mansor, the wife of former Prime Minister Najib Razak, to enter a defense on three counts of corruption. The corruption trial is linked to a multi-million-dollar project that was approved while Najib was prime minister. The corruption charges were filed in 2018 after Najib lost [...]

The Lebanese Criminal Court of Cassation decided on Thursday to remove Judge Fadi Sawan from the high-profile case of Beirut’s August 4 explosion. Sawan was appointed by the Higher Judicial Council (HJC), a 10-judge panel appointed by the country’s ruling class, as a judicial investigator, on the recommendation of the Caretaker Justice Minister Marie-Claude Najem. [...]

A federal grand jury on Friday indicted six new members of the Oath Keepers, a right-wing extremist group, for conspiring to prevent Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. The six members were arrested earlier this week and were included as co-defendants in a superseding indictment alleging that the individuals joined in a [...]

JURIST EXCLUSIVE – Police and soldiers opened fire on protesters in the port area of Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city, on Saturday afternoon Myanmar time. Multiple live rounds were discharged. At least two people were killed and over 40 injured, according to late reports. The dead included a 14-year old boy who was shot in the [...]

A Russian court convicted political activist Anastasia Shevchenko Thursday, finding that she had violated the country’s “undesirable organizations” law through her involvement with a pro-democracy group. Shevchenko was given a four-year suspended sentence. Prosecutors sought five years in prison. Officials first brought the case in January of 2019, when the government contended Shevchenko violated Article 284.1 [...]

Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) announced Thursday that it is investigating the deaths of at least 6,402 civilians between 2002 and 2008 whose deaths may have been falsely presented as combat casualties. This exceeds the 2,000 deaths the JEP was originally set to investigate. This case is known as “false positives,” and the JEP [...]