The Permanent Representatives Committee of the Council of the European Union Thursday agreed on a draft proposal for new rules to combat illegal immigration. Under the proposal, illegal aliens caught within the EU could be deported and banned from returning for five years. Authorities in member states would be allowed to detain aliens for up [...]
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Thursday defended the Bush administration's authorization of the use of harsh interrogation tactics, including waterboarding , on suspected terrorist detainees. In her comments at the headquarters of the technology company Google, Rice stated that a special legal atmosphere existed in the US after the Sept. 11 attacks , but [...]
Alliance Defense Fund , a conservative Christian legal advocacy group, petitioned the Supreme Court of California Thursday to stay its May 15 decision overturning a ban on same-sex marriage until the outcome of the November state elections. It is expected that the November ballot will include an amendment to the California state constitution banning same-sex [...]
JURIST Contributing Editor Haider Ala Hamoudi of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law says that while Iraq has a long and proud legal tradition, and certainly boasts a large number of legal professionals who take their work very seriously and do it well, there are many rules, impediments and obligations that for many of [...]
Alaska Governor Sarah Palin announced Thursday that her office intends to launch a court challenge to last week's listing of the polar bear on the US endangered species list. The suit will be filed in US District Court in Washington and will argue that science shows that polar bears do not need to be protected. [...]
The government of Pakistan reached an agreement with Taliban-linked Islamic militants in the Pakistani North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) area of Swat to implement Islamic Sharia law in the area, according to statements attributed to the militants. Under the agreement, the Pakistani army will withdraw troops from the Swat region and will not oppose the local [...]
Accused Rwanda war crimes suspect Michel Bagaragaza was transferred from the Hague back to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania Wednesday after a Dutch court ruled that it did not have jurisdiction to try his case. In August 2007, the ICTR revoked a previous order transferring Bagaragaza's case to a local [...]
Witt v. Department of the Air Force, US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, May 21, 2008 . Read the full text of the opinion . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.
Mike Dubrasich : "After eight years of a planning exercise called the Sierra Nevada Forest Plan Amendment (SNFPA) – one that involved thousands of people, hundreds of meetings, and tens of thousands of documents, studies, reviews, rehashes, monitoring, and re-monitoring – a Federal judge last week enjoined fire-preventative thinnings created under SNFPA guidance with the [...]
The ban on cluster bombs currently being considered at the Dublin Diplomatic Conference on Cluster Munitions could impede humanitarian efforts by discouraging cooperation with non-signatories, a US State Department official said in a press briefing Wednesday. US Acting Assistant Secretary for Political-Military Affairs Stephen D. Mull said that the draft treaty would bar signatories from [...]
