JURIST reports in April 2026 that UN special rapporteurs publicly urged Türkiye to halt the criminalization of human rights defenders and lawyers, citing seven incidents in the past year in which members or counsel of the Human Rights Association (İHD) were investigated, arrested, or jailed under Türkiye’s broadly drafted anti-terrorism law. The experts called for …
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 …
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 …
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 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 …
The U.S. Department of Justice under Attorney General Pam Bondi is advancing a proposed rule — published in the Federal Register on March 5, 2026 — that would allow the DOJ to suspend state bar disciplinary investigations of its own attorneys whenever a complaint is filed, requiring state bars to pause proceedings while the Department …