The US military has decided to apply the Geneva Conventions to all detainees held in US military custody around the world, according to Tuesday's Financial Times. The move marks a sharp reversal from a previous policy classifying detainees as "enemy combatants" outside the protections of Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. The provision, often called [...]
In re: Search of the Rayburn House Office Building Room Number 2113, United States District Court for the District of Columbia, July 10, 2006 . Read the frull text of the opinion. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.
Schulman v. Attorney General, Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, July 10, 2006 . Read the full text of the opinion . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.
The US military on Monday released the identities of five Army soldiers charged in connection with the rape and murder of an Iraqi woman and the murders of several of her relatives in March at Mahmudiya , 20 miles south of Baghdad. The soldiers and the charges against them are: Spc. James P. Barker – [...]
A three-judge panel of the California Court of Appeals heard oral arguments Monday in six cases focusing on same-sex marriage – the first time a California appeals court has considered the issue. The state Attorney General's Office argued that California should be allowed to maintain its traditional definition of marriage as the union of a [...]
US Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) told reporters Monday that floor action on legislation governing procedures for military commissions at Guantanamo Bay is unlikely until after Labor Day. Frist said that Senate Republicans are busy discussing the legislation with Democrats and the White House and that several Senate committees with jurisdiction over the issue [...]
AP is reporting that a federal judge has ruled that an FBI raid on the congressional office of US Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) was legal and has denied Jefferson's request that documents seized during the raid be returned to him. 4:45 PM ET – After the FBI raided his congressional office as part of an [...]
The parliament of Egypt passed a new press law on Monday but removed a particularly controversial provision that would have allowed journalists to be imprisoned for reporting on alleged financial impropriety by public officials. Still, journalists and rights groups fear that other provisions threaten the freedom of the press. Although the law abolishes jail sentences [...]
A lawyer for the US Justice Department (DOJ) argued in federal court again Monday that a lawsuit challenging the National Security Agency's warrantless domestic surveillance program must be dismissed because defending it in court would jeopardize national security. In the hearing in US District Court in Detroit, DOJ special litigation counsel Anthony J. Coppolino said [...]
Prosecutors working for Cambodia's Khmer Rouge genocide tribunal began formal investigation Monday of criminal acts allegedly committed by surviving leaders of the communist Khmer Rouge regime, which ruled Cambodia from 1975-1978 and was responsible for the deaths of at least 1.5 million Cambodians by execution, forced hardships, or starvation in the so-called "Killing Fields." Led [...]
