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In a breakthrough this week, the European Parliament’s civil liberties committee agreed on a strong proposal for a directive that will guarantee the right to lawyer for all people accused or suspected of crimes.

Judicial independence at the Khmer Rouge court in Cambodia should not be sacrificed in the name of “greater cooperation” with the Cambodian government.

After nearly two years of advocacy by the Open Society Justice Initiative, the UN Human Rights Council moved to address the plight of millions of stateless people—including some five million children.

In a case last November, the UN examined claims that Spanish officials had deliberately failed to protect the life of a migrant and rendered a decision in support of migrants’ rights.

The Public Defender of Rights of the Czech Republic says Roma children face continuing segregation in inferior schools. So why is the government doing nothing?

In cities across Western Europe, young men of color are subjected to discriminatory police stops, contributing to a profound sense of alienation—not just from the police, but from society at large.

Members of the UN Human Rights Council have raised concerns over ethnic, racial and religious profiling in the way British police carry out “stop and search” checks.

The European Court of Human Rights reaffirms the need for pluralism in ownership of radio and television channels in a decision that has implications for the UK debate over News International’s push to buy BSkyB, the British pay-TV network.

Brazil’s Supreme Court has overturned a blanket ban that prevented pretrial release pending trial for anyone charged with certain categories of drug crime.

Judges at the International Criminal Court are increasingly requiring prosecutors to deliver a fuller account of the facts of a case at the earliest stage of the legal process.

This September the "rule of law at the national and international levels" will be on the agenda at the UN General Assembly. There are sharp international differences over what that title means. But there are also important opportunities to agree...

Next week, all 47 member states of the Council of Europe will convene in the seaside town of Brighton to discuss the future of the European Court of Human Rights. With so much at stake, why is civil society being pushed aside?

Fifteen people have filed civil law suits against the French state for racial profiling—the first major legal action in France to address the longstanding police use of identity checks that target visible minorities.

In recent years, the European Court of Human Rights has come to rely on the pilot judgment procedure as a way of managing its overwhelming backlog of cases. But two recent decisions on the procedure itself underline that the new tools alone will...

Police in the UK have argued that those who swear at them during street encounters are likely to cause them alarm and distress, thereby allowing them to use their powers of arrest. A recent ruling rejected the practice.

The peninsula of Bakassi has long been the subject of a territorial dispute between Cameroon and Nigeria. Now it shows what can happen when control over the territory where people live shifts from one country to another.

In the aftermath of the gruesome Comayagua prison fire in Honduras, one fact stands out: Almost two-thirds of the 800 inmates were awaiting trial or being held without charge.

Justice Initiative Fellow Bruce Lasky tells of his experience setting up a legal clinic in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, which opened in January 2004.

For Dominicans of Haitian descent, obtaining proof of citizenship—required for everything from education to employment to voting—has become a legal and bureaucratic impossibility.