US military defense lawyers filed a motion Friday to dismiss charges against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed , the alleged director of the Sept. 11 attacks , and his four co-conspirators. The motion alleges that the charges were unduly influenced by "overreaching" on the part of US Air Force Reserve Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann , who was [...]
The Texas Border Coalition , a group of Texan officials and business owners, filed a class action lawsuit Friday in the US District Court for the District of Columbia to enjoin the Department of Homeland Security from constructing a fence on the US-Mexico border. The lawsuit claims that government officials disobeyed a clause in the [...]
Pakistani lawyers announced plans Saturday to hold large protests in June unless the new government fulfills a pledge to reinstate Supreme Court judges ousted last year by President Pervez Musharraf. Aitzaz Ahsan , President of the Supreme Court Bar Association, told reporters in Lahore that lawyers would hold a "long march" from city to city [...]
The US plans to build a new military detention facility in Afghanistan as a replacement for its current make-shift prison at Bagram Air Base , the New York Times reported Saturday. The $60-million-dollar, 40-acre facility will have the capacity to hold as many as 1,100 prisoners, and is intended to provide more humane living conditions [...]
Amnesty International welcomed Saturday the recently-announced public inquiry into the death of Baha Mousa , an Iraqi hotel receptionist who died in British military custody in 2003. The organization called the inquiry "long overdue" but expressed concern that the investigation could lack impartiality if governed by a 2005 UK law allowing the Secretary of State [...]
A French court released a bank account belonging to Russian news agency RIA Novosti Friday. The account was frozen in January , along with other accounts belonging to several Russian state organizations. The court ruled that the state news agency was a separate entity from the Russian government and should not be liable for state [...]
Jeffery J. Ventrella : "The California Supreme Court in an innocuously titled 4-3 split decision, In re Marriage Cases, sets forth an anything but innocuous ruling that imposes same-sex "marriage" despite a valid contrary expression by the citizens in the 2000 vote – 61% to 39%. Aside from the seismic effect created by the majority's [...]
Ahilan Arulanantham : "I need to start with two caveats. First, I am no expert in either international or comparative law, and I know almost nothing about the law of Belgium or France. Second, in the interest of full disclosure, I was lead counsel (along with Brad Phillips from Munger, Tolles, and Olson in Los [...]
Mathew D. Staver : "Yesterday's California Supreme Court decision represents a raw abuse of judicial authority. In 2000, California voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 22, defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The California Supreme Court overturned the will of the people by declaring Proposition 22 unconstitutional. In its decision, the court [...]
Texas Border Coalition v. Chertoff, US District Court for the District of Columbia, May 16, 2008 . Read the full text of the complaint . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.
