The US Senate continues debate Tuesday on the Marriage Protection Amendment , a proposal for a constitutional amendment defining marriage exclusively as a union between a man and a woman. Sponsored by Sen. Wayne Allard (R-CO) , the amendment effectively prohibiting same-sex marriage came to the Senate floor Monday. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) [...]
Former Yukos oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky has been placed in solitary confinement for violating a prison rule for the third time, Khodorkovsky's lawyer Denis Dyatlev said Monday. Khodorkovsky was placed in the one-man cell Saturday, after allegedly violating a prison rule prohibiting prisoners from selling, buying, accepting or seizing personal food products, objects or substances [...]
The father of a fallen Marine has filed the first lawsuit brought by the family of a servicemember against the renegade Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, seeking unspecified damages for defamation, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress relating to the protest led by Westboro at the funeral of Lance Cpl. Matthew [...]
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.
