The UK and Saudi Arabia: Human Rights and the Perils of Petrodollar Morality – Part I
The Human Rights and Democracy Report (2015) recently released by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office carries a curiously worded statement by Prime Minister David Cameron: “We condemn and do...
Local Politics of International Justice in Kenya: How the ICC let the case slip away (Part I)
In the wake of the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) decision to drop charges against the Deputy President of Kenya, William Ruto, and a radio host, Joshua arap Sang, we must...
The Mandatory Costs of Mandatory Minimum Sentences in Canada
Another day another mandatory minimum struck down. In Lloyd, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that a one-year mandatory minimum sentence that applied to drug trafficking offenders with a prior...
Telling the Whole Truth: Post-Assault Contact in Sexual Violence Cases
For the last 16 months, Canadians have been engaged in extraordinary conversations connected to the sexual assault allegations leveled against one of Canada’s most charming and charismatic talk show hosts,...
Justice Antonin Scalia’s Rebuke of Innocence
Throughout his thirty-year service on the United States Supreme Court, Justice Antonin Scalia questioned whether criminal defendants who maintained their innocence should be entitled to a second chance. Indeed, in...
SAJAP: Facilitating Justice in Namibia
Last year, we featured reflections from Claire Palmer and Rachel Clement on their experiences working as OPBP Interns at the Supreme Court of Namibia as part of the South African...
Sentencing and the Possibility of Reform in India
Last month the Supreme Court of India took a regressive step by affirming a 2008 decision (Swamy Shradhanand) in the case of V. Sriharan v. Union of India. In the...
Minorities suffer as the Supreme Court supports ‘suspicionless’ stop searches
In Roberts v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis and Another, the UK Supreme Court unanimously ruled that section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, which...
The Power of Perception: The ICC and Africa
At a recent event organised by Oxford Transitional Justice Research and the ICC Student Network, Judge Cuno Tarfusser of the International Criminal Court (ICC) addressed a group of students and...
Rape Law in Morocco
The Moroccan Conseil national des droits de l’Homme (National Human Rights Council, CNDH) has issued a worrying report (for the moment only available in French) on the condition of women...
The Meaning of Life Imprisonment – The Case of Khoroshenko v. Russia
Life imprisonment is a harsh sanction that is used in most countries in the world. Evidence from treaty bodies, such as the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture, suggests...
Justifying Deadly Force in the American Supreme Court
The case of City of Los Angeles v. Contreras, currently up for first-round consideration before the Supreme Court of the United States, centres on an important question of criminal procedure:...
