The second day of confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan began Tuesday with Kagan defending her decision to restrict military recruiter access to Harvard Law School while she was dean. Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Jeff Sessions (R-AL) called Kagan’s position “unconnected to reality” and held that it “punished” the military. During her [...]

Two lawsuits have been filed against BP alleging violations of the Rackteer Influenced Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute in connection with the recent Deepwater Horizon oil spill . The first lawsuit, a class action filed on behalf of US residents affected by the oil spill, was filed last week and alleges that BP engaged in a [...]

The British government indicated Monday that it will issue a new set of regulations regarding the use of information obtained via torture. The announcement came as part of the government’s defense against a lawsuit filed by the human rights group Reprieve , which has been seeking a review of the country’s torture policy. A UK [...]

Google announced Monday that it will stop redirecting Internet users in mainland China to its unfiltered search engine in Honk Kong in an effort to renew the company’s Internet Content Provider license. In March, Google began redirecting users from its google.cn search engine to google.com.hk after reaching a legal impasse with the Chinese government over [...]

Amnesty International (AI) on Monday called on the government of East Timor to close legal loopholes in that allow for national amnesties and pardons for war crimes. In a report analyzing the consistency of the country’s penal code with provisions of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and other international laws, AI [...]

Women’s rights group Planned Parenthood of the Heartland filed a lawsuit on Monday opposing a new Nebraska law that will require doctors to perform psychological screenings of patients seeking abortions . The lawsuit names several defendants, including Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman , who signed the new legislation in April, and Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Keith Bybee of Syracuse University says that regardless of other issues that may arise, the confirmation hearings of Elena Kagan, like those of other recent Supreme Court nominees, will be dominated by the tension between images of judicial impartiality and political ideology… As soon as President Obama nominated Elena Kagan for the [...]

The US Senate Judiciary Committee began confirmation hearings Monday for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan , with Democratic and Republican senators offering contrasting interpretations of Kagan’s judicial philosophy and lack of experience on the bench. In his opening statement Senator Ted Kaufman (D-DE) , who replaced Vice President Joe Biden after the 2008 presidential election, [...]

The US Supreme Court on Monday granted certiorari in six cases. In Chamber of Commerce v. Candelaria , the court will determine whether an Arizona statute imposing sanctions on employers that hire illegal immigrants is preempted by federal law. According to 8 USC § 1324(a)(h)(2) , federal law preempts any “tate or local law imposing [...]

The US Supreme Court on Monday ruled 5-4 in Free Enterprise Fund and Beckstead and Watts, LLP v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board that the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 violates constitutional separation of powers by affording members of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) executive power while removing any presidential authority to control the [...]