Special national security courts to try terrorism suspects are "unnecessary" and "dangerous to traditional constitutional protections," according to a report issued Monday by the Constitution Project . The report was endorsed by a panel of national security experts and legal scholars including General Wesley Clark, Yale Law School dean Harold Koh, former FBI director William [...]
A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit Monday ordered the US government to release or transfer a Chinese Uighur Muslim detained at Guantanamo Bay, ruling that Huzaifa Parhat had been improperly designated as an enemy combatant by a US Combatant Status Review Tribunal . Barring release or transfer, the [...]
A Pakistani court Monday blocked Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) head and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from running for parliament, finding that a prior criminal conviction rendered him ineligible for office. Earlier this month, the Election Commission of Pakistan cleared Sharif and his younger brother to run in the June 26 by-elections after a local [...]
The head executives of oil companies should be tried for crimes against humanity and nature for misleading the public about the impact of oil on global warming , according to a NASA climatologist who testified before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming Monday. James Hansen , the long-time director of NASA's [...]
Tunisia is committing wide-spread human rights abuses under overly-broad anti-terrorism legislation , according to a Monday report by Amnesty International . Amnesty said that while the government claims to comply with international norms on due process and detainee treatment, it rarely investigates allegations of rights violations by state security organs: The fact that gaping discrepancies [...]
The US Supreme Court Monday agreed to hear seven cases , including Ministry of Defense and Support for the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran v. Elahi (07-615) . In that case, the Court will consider whether the brother of dissident Cyrus Elahi, assassinated in Paris in 1990, can collect on a default [...]
Howard Learner : "On the transportation front, the Clean Air Act balances federal and state interests by making clear a binary approach: states are empowered to adopt California's emission standards, if a waiver is approved by the U.S. EPA following reasonable consideration, or default to the federal standards. Federal District Courts in California and Vermont [...]
Parhat v. Gates, US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, June 23, 2008 . Read the full text of the order . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.
The president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) wrote in a letter to the UN Monday that the Serbian government had failed to cooperate with Tribunal investigations and cases in violation of the court's UN statute . ICTY president Fausto Pocar told UN Security Council President Zalmay Khalilzad that the court [...]
The US Supreme Court handed down three decisions Monday, including Rothgery v. Gillespie County , in which the Court ruled 8-1 that a person accused of a felony has the right to a lawyer at a probable cause hearing before a magistrate judge. The Court held: We merely reaffirm what we have held before and [...]
