White House and Republican congressional negotiators decided over the weekend to move forward with a definitional change in proposed legislation on military commissions that would broaden the meaning of "unlawful enemy combatant" and allow the detention and trial by commission of a larger spectrum of suspects, the Washington Post reported Tuesday. While the the language [...]
The US Supreme Court granted certiorari in nine cases Tuesday less than a week ahead of the official opening of its 2006 Term on October 2. The grants were decided in the Court's long conference Monday following a summer break and were picked from a pool of some 1900 petitions. Several of the cases are [...]
A tentative agreement has been made on domestic surveillance legislation after Republican negotiators agreed to remove language that would have implicitly recognized the constitutionality of warrantless wiretapping from the National Security Surveillance Act of 2006 , GOP officials announced Monday. Senator Arlen Specter , Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman and sponsor of the legislation, said that [...]
Thailand's new military leadership, which seized power in a coup last week, said Tuesday that a temporary constitution has been drafted that appoints the military rulers as advisers to any interim government. Army Commander-in-Chief Gen. Sonthi Boonyaratkalin said the document will be submitted to academics for their review and then given to King Bhumibol Adulyadej [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Alison Nathan of Fordham University School of Law says that the provision in the military commissions bill stripping the federal courts of habeas jurisdiction over detainees threatens a fundamental element of our constitutional heritage … Following a claim that former deputy-director of State Richard Armitage told Pakistani officials that if Pakistan did [...]
A federal judge Monday stopped the sale of oil and gas rights on approximately 1.7 million acres of protected land on Alaska's North Slope, which the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) had planned for Wednesday to recover an estimated 2 billion barrels of oil sitting under the land. The sale of federal leases would [...]
Saddam Hussein was thrown out of court Tuesday for the third time by new chief judge Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa, who took over the genocide trial after the former chief judge was removed by the Iraqi government last week. Oreibi opened Tuesday's hearing by telling Saddam that he would have to "behave" and then allowed him [...]
Schwab v. Philip Morris, US District Court for the Eastern District of New York, September 25, 2006 . Read the full text of the certification . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.
Three US Marines charged with murdering an unarmed Iraqi civilian in April in Hamdania will face courts-martial, the Marine Corps announced Monday. The decision follows preliminary hearings for the three Marines, all of whom are based at Camp Pendleton, California: Pfc. John J. Jodka III, Cpl. Marshall L. Magincalda and Cpl. Jerry E. Shumate . [...]
Pressure from the Bush administration and the congressional leadership to fast-track a military commissions bill met bipartisan resistance Monday during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing . Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) called the habeas corpus provision of the draft legislation "inexplicable," echoing televised comments he made Sunday suggesting that the provision violates Article 1, Section [...]
