Smith, et al. v. Spisak, US Supreme Court, January 12, 2010 . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here. Latest commentary available here.

Silpa Swarnapuri, Pitt Law '12, attended the Second Annual Gay Pride Parade held in her home country of India… On the eve of New Jersey putting the issue of same-sex marriage to popular vote, I recalled India's Second Annual Gay Pride Parade last June. It was held in the cities of Delhi, Kolkata (Calcutta), Chennai [...]

The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday in two cases. In United States v. Comstock , the Court heard arguments on whether Congress had the authority to enact certain provisions of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act , which allow a person deemed "sexually dangerous" to be civilly committed after the expiration [...]

The 2003 US-British invasion of Iraq was a violation of international law and was not supported by UN resolutions, according to a report released Tuesday by a Dutch parliamentary inquiry. The Dutch Parliament began an investigation into the Iraq War in March by establishing the Committee of Inquiry on Iraq , chaired by former president [...]

A UK court on Tuesday began the first non-jury criminal trial in England or Wales in more than 400 years. Defendants John Twomey, Peter Blake, Barry Hibberd, and Glen Cameron appeared at the Royal Courts of Justice, accused of armed robbery of £1.75m from the Menzies World Cargo Warehouse at Heathrow Airport in 2004. The [...]

Lawyers for former Guantanamo Bay detainee Ahmed Ghailani argued Monday that the charges against their client should be dismissed. Ghailani's lawyers argued before Judge Louis Kaplan of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) that he was denied the right to a speedy trial while being detained for nearly five [...]

Sara Perle and Samara Fox : "The 22-year-old HIV/AIDS ban on the entry into the United States of HIV-positive individuals who are not US citizens ended on January 4, 2010 when the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Extension Act of 2009 came into effect. This act states that: a) HIV infection is no longer included on [...]

A Taiwanese court said Monday that former Taiwanese president Chen Shui-bian will be tried Friday in closed-door proceedings. The High Court said that proceedings, set for 9:30 AM Friday, would be closed to the media under secrecy regulations. Chen was indicted in September on corruption charges relating to funds he received while traveling abroad as [...]

The US Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled unanimously in Smith v. Spisak that the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit contravened the directives of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) by extending Mills v. Maryland to resolve in a habeas petitioner's favor questions that were not decided or addressed in Mills. [...]

A member of the "Toronto 18" pleaded not guilty in a Canadian court on Monday for his alleged role in a failed 2006 terrorist plot to bomb the Toronto Stock Exchange and government buildings. Shareef Abdelhaleem, the first adult of the group to be tried, allegedly planned to profit from the attacks by investing in [...]