The American Civil Liberties Union on Monday requested that the Federal Communications Commission hold back approval of a merger between telecommunications giants AT&T and BellSouth until the FCC investigates allegations made last month that the two companies, along with Verizon Communications , handed over customer phone records to the government as part of the domestic [...]
The Louisiana Senate voted unanimously Monday to send a bill that would ban nearly all abortions in the state to Gov. Kathleen Blanco , who is expected to sign it into law. Doctors who perform abortions could face up to 10 years in prison and $100,000 fines. The bill, banning all abortions except to save [...]
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday extended a deadline he set for the governing Hamas party to accept a "national reconciliation" document which would establish a Palestinian state and implicitly recognize Israel. Abbas has said that if Hamas, which controls the Palestinian Legislative Council , does not accept the document he will put it before [...]
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki on Tuesday announced plans to release 2,500 prisoners held in US detention facilities and Iraqi custody if the detainees "are not Saddam Hussein loyalists or terrorists or anyone who has Iraqi blood on their hands." Maliki's move comes in the name of "national reconciliation," while his government struggles with his [...]
JURIST Special Guest Columnist Wendy J. Keefer, former senior counsel and chief of staff in the US Department of Justice Office of Legal Policy and now with Bancroft Associates in Washington DC, says that claims of a constitutional crisis arising out the recent FBI search of the Capitol Hill office of Rep. William J. Jefferson [...]
Motion filed by Jose Padilla to suppress physical evidence and issue writs and testificandum, United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, May 2006 . Read the full text of Padilla's motion , along with attached exhibits: a material witness warrant and sworn affidavit from FBI Special Agent Joe Ennis; the charging instrument [...]
Zedner v. United States, June 5, 2006 . Read the full text of the opinion per Justice Alito, along with a concurrence from Justice Scalia.
Anza v. Ideal Steel Corp., June 5, 2006 . Read the full text of the opinion by Justice Kennedy along with a concurrence from Justice Scalia, a partial dissent from Justice Thomas and a second partial dissent from Justice Breyer.
A ban on assault weapons in the city of Denver was affirmed by operation of law on Monday when the Colorado Supreme Court deadlocked in a 3-3 vote with one judge abstaining on whether to overturn the decisions in two lower court cases that had upheld the ban. The state enacted two laws in 2003 [...]
A lawyer for terror suspect Jose Padilla has filed a motion to suppress evidence he claims the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) obtained illegally from two sources, one which alleges torture after US rendition to Morocco and another who may have been heavily medicated during interrogation. According to the motion filed last week, Padilla requests [...]
