Mexico’s Supreme Court has voted to uphold legal abortion in Mexico City, making the Mexican capital one of only a handful of places in Latin America that allow abortion without limitations in the first trimester. Here’s the early AP story.
The law was considered historic when it was passed last year, [...]

Associated Press Indonesian soldiers patrol at Exxon Mobil Oil Indonesia in Lhokseumawe, Indonesia, May 18, 2003. ExxonMobil is in some hot water over its Indonesia operations. In 2001, eleven Indonesian villagers filed a suit against the company claiming that it’s liable for alleged killings, torture, rape and kidnappings committed by Indonesian soldiers [...]

In 2005, private equity behemoth Carlyle made a bold move in China. It struck a deal to buy an 85% stake in Xugong, one of the country’s leading machinery makers. At the time, David Rubenstein, Carlyle’s founder, said: “This is not just a landmark deal for Carlyle, this is a landmark deal for everybody. It [...]

A photo released by the State Office of Criminal Investigation in Stuttgart, southern Germany, shows suspect Dr. Aribert Heim, pictured in 1959. (AP/LKA Baden-Wuerttemberg) Is Aribert Heim, the notorious Nazi doctor who is atop the list of the most wanted Nazi war criminals, actually dead? His son Ruediger Heim would like to think so. The son [...]

Last month, the Law Blog attended a gathering of the New York City Bar Association to listen to an address by Aitzaz Ahsan, a 2007 Law Blog Lawyer of the Day. Among Mr. Ahsan’s other distinctions: He’s the president of Pakistan’s Supreme Court Bar Association, and the leader of that country’s “lawyers’ movement,” an organization [...]

All week we’ve been looking for a legal angle on the war between Russia and Georgia. But aside from a short list of law firms in Tbilisi, including DLA Piper and BGI Legal, we couldn’t come up with much. Now, at least, there’s a lawsuit. The Georgian security council filed a suit against Russia in [...]

With yesterday’s passing of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose first major work, “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” took its inspiration from Solzhenitsyn’s time as a guest in the Soviet gulag, we couldn’t help but think of that other famous Russian prisoner, Mikhail Khodorkovsky (pictured, left), the former chairman of the former Yukos, once [...]

There he is, unruly stache and all — Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, the famous promoter of the marketplace of ideas, an oft-cited linchpin of First Amendment jurisprudence. As we’ve reported before, that marketplace doesn’t seem to be doing too well abroad. In France, actress Brigitte Bardot has racked up convictions for provoking racial hatred by [...]

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi listens to speeches during the opening of the African Union Summit in Khartoum Sudan, Jan. 23, 2006. (AP Photo/Sayyid Azim) The big international news of the afternoon: The Bush administration and Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s government are close to reaching a comprehensive agreement to settle all outstanding claims tied to Libya-related terrorism [...]

Denver, Bulgaria, and now, to Turkey. The country’s governing Justice and Development party just barely escaped expulsion yesterday, as Turkey’s Constitutional Court handed a victory to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erodogan, the party’s leader and a former Islamist. The country’s secular establishment, reports the NYT, had been challenging Erdogan, “a broadly popular politician whose supporters [...]