Single Mothers, Absent Fathers and the Best Interests of the Child: Drawing a Fine Balance in the ABC Case
India is a country where religious rights of different communities are constitutionally protected. However adoption is legally permitted only for the Hindu community. Such adoptions are regulated by the Hindu...
Grand Chamber of the ECtHR to Review Limitations on Choice of Birthplace for Women
Dubská and Krejzová v the Czech Republic has been referred to the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights after the successful submission of the League of Human...
US Supreme Court Requires Recognition of Marriage Equality
The US Supreme Court has ruled, in Obergefell, by a 5-4 majority, that the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution requires States to license same-sex marriage, and to recognise same-sex...
The ‘Anderson Report’ on Surveillance Powers Fudges the Issues, but its Findings Should be Implemented
Pressure on the government to reform the use of surveillance powers within the UK has recently ratcheted up another notch. A few months ago the Intelligence and Security Committee of...
Gaughran v Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland: the Need for Evidence-Based Reasoning
The UK Supreme Court has recently held that the indefinite retention of the DNA profiles of convicted adults does not violate article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights...
Pakistan’s New Cyber Law Puts Civil Liberties and Freedom of Expression in Danger
On April 16, in Pakistan, the National Assembly Standing Committee on Information and Technology approved the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Bill 2015. Procedural safeguards and fundamental principles of law have...
Kenyan High Court Declares Law Criminalizing HIV Transmission Unconstitutional
On 18 March 2015, in Aids Law Project v Attorney General and Others [2015] the High Court of Kenya declared section 24 of the HIV and AIDS Prevention and Control...
Tentative Reform of State Surveillance Powers in the UK
Rumblings of discontent have been heard from the supervisory bodies that are entrusted with providing oversight of surveillance operations by UK intelligence agencies. While these demonstrate that the security services...
S.A.S v France: Controlling Identities in European Liberal Democracies
As discussed in previous posts, the ECtHR decided in S.A.S v France that the French criminal law ban on face coverings in all public places does not violate European human...
Privacy, Data Protection and Police Records
Can the retention of records by the police relating to acts that occurred in public be contrary to the right to privacy? Such a matter was recently considered by the...
The Geography of International Law and the Cyber Domain
The geographical scope of the law of armed conflict (LOAC) has engaged the interest of IHL experts for some years dividing opinion as to whether the reach of the law...
Northern Ireland’s Human Rights Commission Granted Leave for Judicial Review to Challenge the Country’s Near-Blanket Ban on Abortion
Unlike the rest of the UK, Northern Ireland is not covered by the Abortion Act 1967. If you are a woman living there who wishes to terminate a pregnancy, the...
