In January, Chief Defense Counsel for Guantanamo war crimes tribunals, Colonel JP Colwell, ordered attorneys under his command not to comply with rules [JURIST report] requiring military officials to review all legal correspondence between lawyers and the detainees accused of involvement in the 9/11 terror attacks. Navy rear Adm. David Woods [official profile] issued the new rule in December. Lawyers for detainees at Guantanamo have previously raised concerns with practices used at the prison. Last November, lawyers complained specifically about the infringement on attorney-client privilege [JURIST report] in a letter directed to the attention of the Deputy Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs.

The court granted certiorari to rule on health care reform law [JURIST report] in three separate cases, originally reserving five-and-half-hours for oral argument on the issue. The court agreed to hear two hours of arguments on the constitutionality of the individual insurance mandate issue in Department of Health and Human Services v. Florida [docket; cert. petition, PDF]. The court will consider Issue 1, which asks, "whether Congress had the power under Article I of the Constitution to enact the minimum coverage provision." The court also directed parties to brief and argue the question of whether the challenge to PPACA is barred by the Anti-Injunction Act [26 USC § 7421(a)], reserving one hour for argument on that issue. The court consolidated the cases of National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius [docket; cert. petition, PDF] and Florida v. Department of Health and Human Services [docket; cert. petition, PDF] and will hear 90 minutes of oral argument on the question of whether the individual mandate provision can be severed from the remainder of the act. Finally, the court will hear one hour of oral argument on the question of Medicaid expansion—Issue 1 in Florida v. Department of Health and Human Services: "Does Congress exceed its enumerated powers and violate basic principles of federalism when it coerces States into accepting onerous conditions that it could not impose directly by threatening to withhold all federal funding under the single largest grant-in-aid program...?" All three cases that the court agreed to hear arose out of the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, which ruled in August that the individual mandate is unconstitutional but severable [JURIST report], upholding the rest of the law.

WikiLeaks has recently revealed more confidential information concerning the United States. In August, the website began publishing "The Guantanamo Files" [JURIST report], a collection of more than 700 classified documents relating to the evidence and treatment of almost all detainees held at Guantanamo Bay between 2002 and 2008. In November 2010, US Attorney General Eric Holder, condemned WikiLeaks [JURIST report] for its publication of confidential information, saying that it threatens US national security, specifically by risking the safety of those serving the country and straining important diplomatic relationships. WikiLeaks has alleged the information must be revealed to the public as evidence of potential crimes against humanity. In July 2010, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said that the Afghan War Diaries, a compilation of 91,000 documents leaked to the organization on the US war effort in Afghanistan, may provide evidence [JURIST report] of war crimes committed by US forces.