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Louise Reyntjens - 30th June 2020
On 25 June 2020, the Strasbourg Court delivered judgement in the case of Ghoumid and others v France. An important question in the case was whether the French administrative measure of citizenship deprivation constituted a punishment in the sense of Article 4, protocol 7 ECHR. The applicants argued that their deprivation of citizenship constituted a […]
Anirudh Mandagere - 18th June 2020
America stands at the crossroads. The tragic death of George Floyd has shone a spotlight on police brutality against African-Americans. Attention has shifted to reforming the police, and punishing misconduct. A bill has been introduced in the US Congress to end the prohibition on suing police officers. Entitled the ‘Ending Qualified Immunity Act’, the proposed […]
Pranav Agarwal - 28th May 2020
On 5 March 2020, after more than a decade of preliminary examination, and the initial rejection by Pre-Trial Chamber-II (‘the Chamber’) of the International Criminal Court, the Appeals Chamber unanimously authorized Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to initiate an investigation into the alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity (Articles 7 and 8, Rome Statute) committed by […]
Neetika Vishwanath and Preeti Pratishruti Dash - 28th May 2020
Project 39A at National Law University, Delhi analysed judgments of all capital cases (215 in total) across trial courts of three Indian states, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, decided over a 16 year period from 2000 to 2015. The resulting report offers an insight into the nature and extent of the broken state of capital […]
Vandita Khanna - 13th May 2020
On 13 April 2020, the Supreme Court of India ordered that ‘foreigners’ who had been detained for at least two years in the state of Assam would be eligible for conditional release in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this post, I argue that behind the veneer of a positive outcome, the decision seems to […]
Daniel Cullen - 17th April 2020
On 25 March 2020, the UK Supreme Court handed down its judgment in the case of Elgizouli v SSHD [2020] UKSC 10. At issue was the legality of a UK Government decision to provide mutual legal assistance (MLA) to US authorities in circumstances where the information shared may be used in a prosecution for offences […]
Samantha O'Donnell - 14th April 2020
As the Australian government struggles to keep up with the rapid pace of COVID-19 (coronavirus), societal freedoms are being restricted. At the same time, certain constraints around criminal procedure are being loosened. In Australia’s most populous state, New South Wales (NSW), the government has introduced the COVID-19 Legislation Amendment (Emergency Measures) Bill 2020 (Emergency Legislation) […]
Lynn-Sophie Temp - 16th March 2020
With over 500 cases of COVID-19 reported in Chinese prisons and Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian woman detained in Iran, suspected of having contracted the virus, the question of what obligations States have to protect the health of prisoners in the event of outbreak of diseases could not be more relevant. The jurisprudence of the UN […]
Jessica Anania - 6th March 2020
Since August 2017, at least 10,000 Rohingya – a Muslim minority group in Myanmar’s Rakhine state – have been killed and 700,000 have fled to neighboring Bangladesh amidst a brutal army crackdown and clearing operation. Widespread sexual violence with “genocidal intent” was also documented, including rape and gang rape perpetrated against women, girls, men, boys, […]
Luciana Morón - 3rd March 2020
In three cases on pre-trial detention decided in late 2019, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights found that Argentina violated articles 7 and 8 of the American Convention on Human Rights (the rights to personal liberty and fair trial). In Romero Feris v Argentina it held that pre-trial detention in the case was illegal and arbitrary […]
Nirmalya Chaudhuri - 15th February 2020
In two cases decided in 2019, the Bombay and Calcutta High Courts adopted diverging positions regarding the applicability of the reverse onus clause contained in Section 29 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO). In the case of Imran Shamim Khan, the Bombay High Court convicted the accused by relying on the […]
Amra Ismail - 15th February 2020
In the landmark judgement of Rathnayake Tharanga Lakmali v Niroshan Abeykoon, the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka held that the extra-judicial killing of a suspect in police custody violated the right to life, despite the absence of an explicit right to life in the Constitution of Sri Lanka. The court directed the State to pay […]