The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) on Thursday used the death of a Guantanamo detainee to highlight what it claims are problems with the detention system currently used by the US for dealing with suspected terrorists. The detainee, Awal Gul, had been at the Guantanamo Bay detention center since October 2002, suspected of having aided [...]
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay on Friday called on Egyptian authorities to immediately release lawyers, journalists and human rights activists who have been arrested and for the government to investigate whether the violence against protesters has been planned. Pillay condemned Thursday’s arrest of 20 activists and lawyers from the Hisham Mubarak Law [...]
A judge for the US District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana on Wednesday found the US Department of Interior (DOI) in contempt and ordered the department to pay attorney’s fees for Hornbeck Offshore Services and several other drilling companies challenging the government’s latest moratorium on offshore drilling . Judge Martin Feldman found that [...]
William M. LeoGrande : “President Obama’s new regulations liberalizing travel to Cuba represent a key step forward in his policy of engagement. The new regulations eliminate the barriers to academic, educational, and cultural exchange imposed by President George W. Bush in 2003 and 2004. Those barriers eliminated most contact with Cuban civil society, which had [...]
JURIST Guest Columnists Victor Hansen and Lawrence Friedman of New England School of Law say if Congress wants to reverse the recent trend of being a bystander to critical national security policymaking, it must work with the president to create a structure to guide his decision-making process….
A judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia heard arguments Wednesday on a new challenge to the Voting Rights Act of Act of 1965 (VRA) . Arguing before Judge John Bates, officials representing Shelby County, Alabama, together with a corps of conservative activists, argued that it is no longer constitutionally justifiable [...]
The UK government’s independent reviewer of terror laws on Thursday published a report saying that rulings from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) made it difficult to remove foreign terror suspects from Britain. Control orders , created by the Prevention of Terrorism Act of 2005 (PTA) , are available to authorities when a terror [...]
Kenya’s High Court of Nairobi ruled Thursday that recent judicial nominations by President Mwai Kibaki are unconstitutional, halting parliament’s approval proceedings. Agreeing with an earlier pronouncement by Prime Minister Raila Odinga , Justice Daniel Musinga ruled in favor of eight advocacy groups, largely devoted to women’s rights, which alleged that recent appointments violated promises of [...]
The Superior Court of California County of Los Angeles on Wednesday approved a $6.5 million settlement between the state of California and two former Countrywide Financial Corporation executives accused of predatory lending. The lawsuit alleged that Countrywide lured borrowers with low teaser rates prior to the mortgage crisis. The loan officers did not warn borrowers [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit on Wednesday upheld a lower court ruling barring the Ten Commandments from being displayed in an Ohio courthouse. The display, called “Philosophies of Law in Conflict,” includes two columns bearing the headings “Moral Absolutes: The Ten Commandments” and “Moral Relatives: Humanist Precepts” and was situated above [...]
