Special prosecutor Jack Smith dropped two criminal cases against US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, including his 2020 election interference case and an appeal in his classified documents case, which had been dismissed in July. According to Smith’s court filing, the Department of Justice (DOJ) determined it would be unconstitutional to prosecute Trump because of [...]

Louisiana’s Republican-controlled Legislature has approved a constitutional amendment that would empower law-makers to expand the number of crimes in which juveniles between 14 and 16 years old can tried as adults. The relevant constitutional amendment surrounds Article V, Section 19 (Special Juvenile Procedures) of the Constitution of Louisiana. The section currently outlines 15 violent juvenile [...]

Belarus has granted asylum to a former Polish judge following espionage charges in Poland. In a decree granting citizenship to 257 people from 16 countries Friday, President Alexander Lukashenko stated that Tomasz Szmydt faces political persecution in Poland. Szmydt defected to Belarus in May and announced his resignation from the Warsaw Provincial Court in a [...]

Edited by: James Joseph | Managing Editor for Long-Form Content In 2023, a woman was killed every ten minutes by a partner or family member, a UN report said. While figures like this may seem unfathomable, they reflect a world in which women are denied the most fundamental of human rights. United Nations statistics show [...]

The Australian government opted to abandon proposed laws on Sunday requiring social media companies to regulate misinformation and disinformation that appears on their platforms. The Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2024 was abandoned after several parties announced they would not support the bill, leaving no viable path for it to pass through the [...]

Sonja Rzepsiki is a JURIST Senior Editor. She attended the COP29 conference in Azerbaijan as part of a group from the Vermont Law & Graduate School.  The painfully slow march of climate action was profoundly evident at COP29 this year. As a JURIST staff editor who attended the conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, I am proud [...]

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law on Saturday a bill that provides debt relief to recruits who sign up to fight in Ukraine, and their spouses. Federal law No. 391 was previously passed by the State Duma, lower house of the Russian parliament, on Tuesday November 19, and comes into force in December.  The [...]

The United Nations said on Friday that Myanmar unprecedently has the highest number of civilian causalities from anti-personnel landmines, with children making up over a third of these numbers. UN experts have called for adherence to international law, warning that the situation is dire for Myanmar’s children. The Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor’s 20 November [...]

William Hibbitts is JURIST’s Deputy Editorial Director, based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. He filed this dispatch from Halifax.  The atmosphere in Halifax was marked by contrasts Saturday. On the one hand, Canada’s largest east coast city and longtime Atlantic naval base was yet again hosting the Halifax International Security Forum, an annual conference attended [...]

Thousands of protesters gathered across French cities on Saturday to condemn femicides and sexual violence against women in light of the Pelicot trial and the victory of US president-elect Donald Trump.  The protests also took place in anticipation of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, with feminist organization Nous Toutes (All [...]