CBS News reports that Judge Lady Gissela Pachar Huanga of the Santa Rosa Criminal Judicial Unit was shot and killed on May 11 in Machala, Ecuador, while travelling by car to a gym. Her assigned bodyguards were not present at the time of the attack. According to the reporting, Pachar had received death threats since …
Published May 8 in TIME, this essay surveys a global wave of state-sponsored attacks on lawyers, framing them as a deliberate authoritarian tactic to disable democratic checks. It highlights the April 2026 re-arrest of Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh — a Sakharov Prize laureate previously sentenced to 33 years and 148 lashes — and …
The International Association of Legal Ethics is hosting a conference in Berlin on June 25-26, 2026, titled “The Legal Profession in Times of Rule of Law and Democratic Backsliding.” Bringing together lawyers, judges, legal scholars, and bar association leaders from around the world, the conference will examine how legal professionals can defend democratic institutions and …
Kathleen Rubenstein, executive director of the Skadden Foundation (which administers the prestigious Skadden Fellows program), has resigned over law firm Skadden’s $100 million settlement with Trump that includes a commitment to fund at least five Skadden Fellows annually who represent a range of political views including conservative perspectives. Rubenstein stated she chose to resign rather …
An Associated Press analysis published May 2, 2026 found that during the second Trump administration’s first 15 months, district court judges have ruled the executive branch in violation of court orders in at least 31 separate lawsuits — roughly one of every eight cases in which courts have at least temporarily blocked administration action. Cited …
Broadcast on May 1, 2026, this WXXI public-radio program convenes retired federal and state judges to assess the state of judicial independence in the United States as the country approaches its 250th anniversary. Participants distinguish between ordinary public criticism of judicial decisions, which they characterize as constitutionally healthy, and a newer phenomenon in which sitting …
Reporting on the recently enacted Twenty-Seventh Constitutional Amendment (May 1, 2026), the article details how Pakistan’s parliament has restructured the judiciary in ways that the International Commission of Jurists has called “a flagrant attack on the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law.” The amendment creates a new Federal Constitutional Court whose members …
Four of President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees, including two for the Southern District of Texas, declined under oath to answer whether Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election or whether the U.S. Capitol was attacked on January 6, 2021, during Senate Judiciary Committee testimony, instead saying Biden had been “certified” as the winner and characterizing …
On April 30, 2026, an Istanbul court granted conditional release to 15 of the more than 400 defendants prosecuted alongside jailed Istanbul mayor and CHP opposition figure Ekrem İmamoğlu, who has now been detained for over a year and faces 142 charges with a potential cumulative sentence of up to 2,430 years. Several of the …
On April 29, 2026, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico publicly confirmed that he has filed a criminal complaint against Judge Pamela Zaleska of the Specialized Criminal Court over her handling of the conviction of former special prosecutor Dušan Kováčik. The Supreme Court of the Slovak Republic publicly objected to the Prime Minister’s stated justification for …