A new Constitutional Court of Qatar , established to hear disputes over matters of constitutional interpretation, became functional Sunday. The court will act primarily to ensure that legislation complies with the country's constitution , which took effect in 2005, but will also be an appellate court for disputes over lower courts' interpretations of the law. [...]
Only about one out of every four individuals charged with terrorist activities has been prosecuted because federal agencies do not agree on what constitutes a terrorist, according to a study released Sunday by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University. The study looked at thousands of records from the Administrative Office of the [...]
Heidi Boghosian : "The police response to protests at the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh will be remembered as especially brutal, given the debut of military sonic weapons against civilians. Technology used in Iraq, long range acoustic devices (LRADs), are more insidious than other so called less-lethal munitions because they leave no visible marks and can [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Anthony D'Amato of Northwestern University School of Law says that the Obama administration can break the sixty-year deadlock in negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians by supporting the establishment of a special moot court – a quasi-official, transparent, privately funded tribunal that would render a non-binding advisory opinion on the two [...]
The US will have a hard time convincing other countries to adopt emissions-cutting legislation so long as an American bill capping carbon emissions remains unpassed, US climate change chief negotiator Jonathan Pershing said in an interview with AP published Sunday. The Waxman-Markey Climate Bill passed the House of Representatives in June by a vote of [...]
US Army First Lt. Ehren Watada has won discharge from military service after a three year battle to avoid redeployment in Iraq, according to media reports Friday. Watada sought to leave the army in 2006 in objection to the war in Iraq, arguing that by participating in it, he would be committing war crimes for [...]
Edward Alden : "Under normal circumstances, China's decision to appeal a recent World Trade Organization ruling against Beijing's restrictions on the import of foreign films, books and music would scarcely have been noticed. In the 13-year history of the WTO's experiment with binding dispute settlement, about 70 percent of the panel decisions have been referred [...]
Ben Wizner : "The Department of Justice's new policy on state secrets may turn out to be a small step in the right direction. If it results in fewer – and more nuanced – invocations of the state secrets privilege in future litigation, the Department will deserve some credit. But the new policy will be [...]
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) Saturday announced that three more detainees have been released from the Guantanamo Bay prison. Two Uzbek detainees were transferred to Ireland and one Yemeni national was transferred to Yemen. According to the DOJ's release: As directed by the President's Jan. 22, 2009 Executive Order, the interagency Guantanamo Review Task [...]
Police used unnecessary force to disperse demonstrations at the Pittsburgh Group of 20 (G-20) Summit , several civil liberties groups said Friday. Witold "Vic" Walczak, Legal Director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania (ACLU-PA) said that police deployed throughout the city in a manner that prevented lawful demonstrations , suppressed free speech and [...]
