The Spain Attorney General’s Office announced Wednesday that it is investigating 68 cases of alleged sexual abuse of minors by Catholic church staff members. This is the first release of such official data. The Spanish Catholic Church has been under heavy scrutiny since allegations of sexual abuse of minors within the church surfaced in December [...]

The Iran Human Rights Documentation Center (IHRDC) submitted a request to the International Criminal Court (ICC) Wednesday for the opening of a preliminary examination into the role of the Islamic Republic of Iran (Iran) and the armed groups in Syria it controls in crimes committed during the conflict in Syria. In the request, the IHRDC [...]

Italy’s Constitutional Court rejected a request Wednesday to hold a referendum on legalizing the cultivation of both marijuana and other psychoactive plants and fungi. In December, activists were able to compile more than 630,000 signatures for the measure, validated by a separate court last month. Although there were more than enough valid signatures for the [...]

The UK Supreme Court held Wednesday that a person under criminal investigation has a “reasonable expectation of privacy” with regard to information about that investigation prior to being charged. This judgment is anticipated to have a great impact on journalism. The respondent and the company he worked for (identified anonymously as “ZXC” and “X Ltd.” [...]

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken released a statement Wednesday condemning the Russia Duma’s resolution to recognize the independence of “so-called” Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People’s Republics (LPR) as “independent.” The statement follows a Tuesday vote by the Russia Duma asking President Vladimir Putin to recognize the independence of the two quasi-states in [...]

Law students from the University of Ottawa are filing dispatches for JURIST on the “Freedom Convoy” protest in Canada’s capital that has paralyzed the city for some three weeks. Here, 1L Mélanie Cantin reports.  The Confederate flag and Nazi swastika were spotted on the first weekend the Freedom Convoy arrived in Ottawa, but casual onlookers [...]

The United States Supreme Court Wednesday agreed to hear a request from New York City teachers to block a vaccine mandate over religious objections, despite Justice Sonia Sotomayor initially denying the request.  In October 2021, Sotomayor denied a request from a group of New York City teachers challenging the city and state’s vaccine mandate for [...]

A bipartisan group of senators submitted a resolution Tuesday calling on the US Senate to support Ukraine “against any further Russian military aggression.” These calls follow Russia’s deployment of over 100,000 troops to the Ukrainian border in the last few days. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Europe and Regional [...]

The application for leave to appeal by Jacob Zuma, seeking to have the prosecutor in his corruption trial removed from the case, was dismissed Wednesday. Judge Pief Koeman dismissed the application because he said it lacked reasonable prospects for success. The recently rejected application stems from an earlier judgment issued by the same court on [...]

President Joe Biden Tuesday ordered the National Archives to send the Trump White House visitor logs to a House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, rejecting former President Donald Trump’s executive privilege claims. In January, National Archives provided the Trump White House visitor logs to Biden’s White House. The documents [...]