CNN reported on April 11 that Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s public statements about Kilmar Abrego Garcia — a Salvadoran national whom the government wrongly deported to a mega-prison in El Salvador — may lead a federal judge to dismiss human smuggling charges against Abrego Garcia on grounds of vindictive prosecution. Blanche publicly linked Abrego …
In early April 2026, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) renewed calls for the Indonesian government to hold accountable all those responsible for the March 12 acid attack on human rights lawyer and legal aid defender Andrie Yunus, who sustained severe burns to his face, eye, chest, and hands after two assailants attacked him …
The Trump administration has been engaged in a legal battle against several prominent law firms — Perkins Coie, WilmerHale, Jenner & Block, and Susman Godfrey — after issuing executive orders targeting them for representing clients and causes the president opposes. When the firms fought back, federal district courts ruled against the administration, finding the executive …
UN human rights experts issued an urgent appeal on April 2, 2026, demanding Pakistan immediately and unconditionally release human rights defender Idris Khattak, who has been detained for over six years following his enforced disappearance in November 2019. Khattak, whose detention was ruled arbitrary by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in November 2025, …
On March 23, 2026, Chinese human rights lawyer Xie Yang was sentenced to five years in prison and fined approximately $14,500 USD by a court in Hunan Province on charges of “inciting subversion of state power.” The conviction was based largely on his social media posts and interviews with foreign media. Xie Yang has a …
On April 1, 2026, prominent Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh was arrested without a judicial warrant by security forces who raided her home at night and transferred her to an undisclosed location. Agents also seized personal belongings including phones and laptops without legal authorization. The arrest came while her husband, Reza Khandan, was already …
UN human rights experts issued a formal statement on March 31, 2026, urging Turkey to stop criminalizing human rights defenders and lawyers, with particular concern focused on members of the Human Rights Association (İHD). Several İHD members have faced serious legal consequences under Turkey’s broad anti-terrorism laws. One member was convicted for providing small financial …
Israel’s democratic erosion has been a deliberate, step-by-step process rather than a sudden collapse. Political scientists describe what is happening as “executive aggrandizement,” where elected leaders use legal mechanisms to weaken the institutions that check their power. Netanyahu’s coalition has done exactly this — passing laws to limit the Supreme Court’s oversight abilities, restructuring the …
The latest NY Times opinion by By Duncan Hosie, a legal scholar at the Stanford Constitutional Law Centerar, gues that courts alone cannot stop Trump’s attacks on constitutional norms because constitutional law depends on leaders respecting legal limits, and Trump instead treats the law as something to manipulate while using delay, uncertainty, and pressure to weaken …
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 …