JURIST Guest Columnist Peter Shane of Moritz College of Law, Ohio State University, says that decisions by the Republican leaders of two congressional committees not to launch probes into warrantless NSA surveillance of Americans contrary to FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, reflect a serious breakdown in the constitutional system of checks and balances between [...]
Sheriff's officials in Los Angeles have said they intend to pursue criminal charges against at least two dozen inmates who participated in a series of racially motivated riots in early February at the North County Correctional Facility . Two people have been killed in the violence and over 100 inmates have been injured in a [...]
A Belgian court has convicted three men for being members of an Islamic group connected to terror attacks in Casablanca in May 2003 and Madrid in March 2004. The men were on trial for their alleged membership in a Belgian cell of the militant Moroccan Islamist Combatant Group (GICM) . The case was the first [...]
The UN High Commission on Refugees has expressed alarm at Ukraine's deportation of 10 Uzbek asylum-seekers to Uzbekistan where they may face torture and abuse, alleging the deportations violated international law. An eleventh detainee was kept in Ukraine because he has relatives there. Nine of the eleven men had registered with UNHCR office in Kiev [...]
French Justice Minister Pascal Clement has responded to a new Council of Europe (COE) report released on Wednesday criticizing France's human rights record by calling it "unfair". The 100 page report identified a range of shortcomings in the French justice system relating to the treatment of newly arrived foreigners, domestic violence, police brutality, detention conditions, [...]
US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Thursday rejected a call from thirty-one Senate Democrats to recuse himself from the ongoing investigation of Jack Abramoff because he was too close to the President and other top officials associated with the lobbyist. In January, Gonzales similarly rebuffed a call from Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Ken Salazar (D-CO) [...]
EPIC v. DOJ, United States District Court for the District of Columbia, February 16, 2006 . Read the full text of the opinion. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.
The US Senate moved closer towards a long-term renewal of the USA Patriot Act Thursday, easily overcoming a filibuster by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) in a 96-3 vote . Sens. Jim Jeffords (I-VT) and Robert Byrd (D-WV) cast the only votes joining Feingold in his efforts. Feingold has taken issue with a renewal provision of [...]
The Constitutional Court of Thailand , the country's highest court, decided Thursday not to hear a petition to impeach Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra , ruling 8-6 that the petition did not clearly state how the Prime Minister was personally involved in a deal where his family sold its controlling stake in telecommunications giant Shin Corporation [...]
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has sent a letter to Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) seeking to dissuade the committee from calling former Attorney General John Ashcroft and Deputy Attorney General James Comey to testify before the panel, saying their testimony would provide no new information on the NSA warrantless surveillance program. The [...]
