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Rupert Skilbeck, head of litigation at the Open Society Justice Initiative, looks at the evolution of international law on torture and ill-treatment.

Marion Isobel of the Open Society Justice Initiative looks at how international legal standards are being used to combat torture, abuse and excessive detention of suspects in police custody.

Darian Pavli of the Open Society Justice Initiative reviews the evolution of the “right to know” in international law.

James A. Goldston, executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative, discusses the theory and practice of public interest litigation.

Laura Bingham, a lawyer with the Open Society Justice Initiative, looks at the legal battle to persuade states to eliminate the scourge of statelessness, which blights the lives of millions around the world.

Julia Harrington Reddy, a lawyer at the Open Society Justice Initiative, considers the challenges and effectiveness of using strategic litigation in the battle to end discrimination.

Europe’s top human rights court has affirmed the importance of early access to legal counsel. But the UN Human Rights Committee has passed up an opportunity to affirm the same high standards globally.

France’s new prime minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, says his government is planning to introduce a system of “receipts” aimed at tracking police stops that have been found to focus disproportionately on Arab and African youths.

The head of Malawi's Paralegal Advisory Service Institute talks about how an innovative legal aid scheme for pretrial detainees in Malawi sowelaid the groundwork for new global UN guidelines on access to legal advice.

Many of the cases brought before the UN Committee against Torture are brought by people who claim that their extradition or deportation would put them at risk of torture. But sometimes, the situation is compounded. What if a request for...

After spending two years in jail, a Filipino radio broadcaster set out to challenge the country's libel law that makes defamation a criminal offense.

Recent decisions from the top American and European human rights courts affirmed that sexual orientation and gender identity are protected categories under international law.

Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb commander, is charged at the ICTY with genocide, including the use of rape and other forms as sexual violence as a means to destroy thousands of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats through "serious bodily or...

Sierra Leone's parliament has just enacted one of the most progressive legal aid laws in Africa—with an innovative approach to providing access to justice for all that will reinforce the rule of law in a society still scarred by the brutal civil...

Judges at Europe’s top human rights court hear the case of Khaled El-Masri, a German citizen mistakenly abducted in Macedonia and shipped to Afghanistan, in the latest stage of a search for accountability.

In the aftermath of the verdict at the Special Court for Sierra Leone, voices weighed in on the conclusion of the nearly six-year long saga.

Members of the UN have agreed that properly funded legal aid schemes are not just optional, but should be a basic part of any country's justice system.

The guilty verdict against Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia, represents the first time that an international court has convicted a former head of state of responsibility for various forms of sexual violence.

The European Court of Human Rights has for the first time declined to hear a criminal case on the grounds that the applicant had not suffered "a significant disadvantage", using a criterion developed to help reduce its excessive caseload.