On March 24, 2026 — the eve of Nowruz, the Iranian New Year — human rights organizations documented a new phase in Iran’s systematic use of judicial institutions to suppress political dissent, describing the Islamic Republic’s strategy as “Official State Terrorism and Arbitrary Deprivation of Life.” Iranian courts have processed over 10,000 cases arising from …
On March 23, 2026, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights heard a new case brought by the prominent Turkish rights defender Osman Kavala, who has been held continuously in pretrial detention since October 2017 — despite multiple binding ECHR judgments ordering his release. The case represents the latest chapter in a …
On March 23, 2026, the Changsha Intermediate People’s Court sentenced human rights lawyer Xie Yang, 54, to five years in prison on charges of “inciting subversion of state power,” with 100,000 yuan (approximately $14,500) confiscated. Human Rights Watch documented that the verdict was based primarily on WeChat posts rather than any criminal conduct, that the …
As of March 20, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government was poised to host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — subject to an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for alleged crimes against humanity in Gaza — at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Budapest, in direct defiance of Hungary’s still-active treaty obligations under the Rome …
A Washington Post investigation published March 19 found that federal inspectors general — the independent watchdogs legally mandated to investigate waste, fraud, and abuse across executive agencies — have lost approximately 16.6% of their workforce since January 2025, outpacing broader government downsizing. The administration carried out a mass firing of inspectors general in early 2025, …
On March 18, 2026, the IAPL Monitoring Committee on Attacks on Lawyers published a report from an International Mission of Jurists documenting a pervasive “climate of fear” among legal professionals in Guatemala, with lawyers, prosecutors, and judges facing systematic harassment, arbitrary detention, forced exile, and criminal prosecution for carrying out their professional duties. The report …
On March 19, sitting federal judges convened an extraordinary public forum organized by the group Speak Up for Justice, during which they read aloud profane and violent threats they had personally received — including voicemails threatening to “put a bullet in your head” — as part of a coordinated effort to document and condemn the …
In an unusually direct public intervention on March 17, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. declared that personal criticism of federal judges is “dangerous” and “has got to stop,” in remarks widely interpreted as directed at the Trump administration and its congressional allies. Roberts’ statement came as federal judges across the country faced a documented surge …
On March 17, Italians began voting in a confirmatory constitutional referendum on a sweeping judicial overhaul — the so-called “Nordio Reform” — advanced by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s coalition government and framed publicly as a technical modernization of the judiciary. The reform would separate the career tracks of judges and prosecutors, split the High Council …
On March 14, 2026, MEDEL (Magistrats Européens pour la Démocratie et les Libertés), an association of European magistrates, convened a conference in Rome titled “Europe in the context of the global attack on the Rule of Law and international law,” gathering testimony from lawyers, judges, and prosecutors across Europe and the United States about the …