In November ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo detailed the charges [JURIST report] against al-Senussi and Saif al-Islam to the UN Security Council [official website]. Saif al-Islam was arrested [JURIST report] in November and is currently in Libyan custody. Earlier in the month, Ocampo said that he has evidence against Saif al-Islam for his role in planning attacks on Libyan civilians [JURIST report]. According to Ocampo, Saif al-Islam hired mercenaries to assist him in carrying out his plans to attack civilians that protested the rule of his father.

Egypt has been heavily criticized for the way it treated protesters during the Egyptian revolution. Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch [advocacy websites] released reports that protesters had been tortured and improperly detained [JURIST reports]. AI has also criticized the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) [NYT backgrounder], stating that human rights violations against protesters committed by the SCAF may be equal to those committed under Mubarak. Egyptians will elect a new leader next week.

The record, however, fails to confirm either the existence of the purported intra-class conflict or a violation of due process. Rather, the record confirms that the two plaintiff classes possess the necessary commonality and adequate representation to warrant certification, and that the district court, therefore, did not abuse its discretion in certifying the two plaintiff classes in the settlement or in approving the terms of the settlement as fair, reasonable, and adequate pursuant to Rule 23(e). Accordingly, we affirm the judgment approving the class settlement agreement.

The lawsuit was brought in 1996 under the leadership of Elouise Cobell, who passed away [JURIST report] last fall. Plaintiffs accused the US Department of the Interior of mismanaging funds held in trust for American Indian landowners. The settlement was agreed upon [JURIST report] in December 2009. The plaintiffs had rejected [JURIST report] a $7 billion settlement offer in 2007.

Last year UK lawmakers voted by an overwhelming majority not to lift the ban [JURIST report] on prisoners voting, setting up a potential conflict with the ECHR ruling. In October the UK's top judge, Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales Lord Igor Judge [official profile], said that UK courts are not bound [JURIST report] by decisions from the ECHR. Speaking before the Lords Constitution Committee [official website], Judge suggested that while UK courts are not required to follow the ECHR, they should consider ECHR decisions when deciding cases. UK Supreme Court [official website] President Nicholas Phillips [official profile] countered Judge, saying that ECHR decisions will always control UK courts as long as the Human Rights Act of 1998 [text], which ratified the European Convention on Human Rights [text, PDF], remains in effect.

Earlier this month the ACLU filed a motion [JURIST report] in the Guantanamo Bay [JURIST backgrounder] military court seeking access to hear what methods the CIA used when interrogating the five alleged 9/11 conspirators. A "high value" terror suspect [DNI profile] who was transferred to Guantanamo Bay [JURIST report] in 2006, Abu Zubaydah is a Palestinian and alleged al Qaeda facilitator who was captured in Pakistan in 2002 and taken to multiple CIA black sites, where he claims he was the victim of various human rights violations. According to Zubaydah, whose claims are supported by government intelligence reports, he was waterboarded approximately 83 times [CIA memo, PDF] while in Thailand, then flown from Morocco to a secret detention facility [JURIST news archive] in Lithuania in February 2005, where he was supposedly tortured once again. In October Zubayadah filed a complaint [JURIST report] against Lithuania in the European Court of Human Rights [official website] for torture and secret detention. At the time Lithuania is the only European country to have admitted directly working with CIA officials to provide secret detention facilities. Additionally, in December 2010 Zubaydah asked Polish prosecutors [JURIST report] to investigate his alleged abuse at a secret CIA prison in Poland, where he claims he was the victim of enhanced interrogation techniques. He also asked a US Combatant Status Review Tribunal to investigate his claims of torture [JURIST report] in 2007.

In December a UN panel of independent human rights experts warned that the Peaceful Assembly Act would severely curtail [JURIST report] citizens' right to peaceably assemble. In November Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak [official profile] defended the law [JURIST report], saying it would balance citizens' right to protest with public safety concerns. However, it has drawn ire from both Malaysians and the international community. Anwar himself has stated that the bill is more draconian than previous free speech crackdowns in Zimbabwe and Myanmar [JURIST reports].

The $675,00 verdict was found at one point to be "unconstitutionally excessive" and reduced to $67,500, but the full amount of the judgment was reinstated [JURIST report] in September by the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit [official website]. The original 2009 ruling [JURIST report] held that Joel Tenenbaum [defense website] was liable for illegally downloading music. Four record companies, including Sony BMG and Warner Brothers [corporate websites], brought suit against Tenenbaum for illegally downloading 30 songs in violation of copyright laws. Tenenbaum admitted to downloading hundreds of songs, and the judge directed the jury to consider only the amount of damages [Boston Globe report].

The controversy in the case was over the $5000 document translation cost relating to Taniguchi's failure to prevail in his suit against a Saipan hotel for an injury he suffered when his leg fell through the hotel's deck [WSJ report]. The Supreme Court took the case to resolve a split between the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit [official website] and the other circuits over the definition of "interpreter."

Just as the Act generally refers to state law to determine whether an applicant qualifies as a wife, widow, husband, widower, child or parent, so in several sections, the [Social Security Act] sets duration-of-relationship limitations. Time limits also qualify the statutes of several States that accord inheritance rights to posthumously conceived children. No time constraints attend the Third Circuit's ruling in this case, under which the biological child of married parents is eligible for survivors benefits, no matter the length of time between the father's death and the child's conception and birth. The paths to receipt of benefits laid out in the Act and regulations, we must not forget, proceed from Congress' perception of the core purpose of the legislation. The aim was not to create a program "generally benefiting needy persons"; it was, more particularly, to "provide ... dependent members of [a wage earner's] family with protection against the hardship occasioned by [the] loss of [the insured's] earnings." We have recognized that "where state intestacy law provides that a child may take personal property from a father's estate, it may reasonably be thought that the child will more likely be dependent during the parent's life and at his death." Reliance on state intestacy law to determine who is a "child" thus serves the Act's driving objective.

The Supreme Court granted certiorari in the case in November and heard oral arguments [JURIST reports] in March. Karen Capato gave birth to twins conceived through IVF using her late husband's frozen sperm, nearly two years after he died of cancer. The Capato family argued that the federal definition "child" made clear that children conceived via IVF should be allowed to receive social security benefits, because the SSA must rely on the objective standard of "child" under Title II of the Social Security Act [42 USC § 401 et seq.].

The Board, to be sure, did not highlight the statute's gaps or ambiguity; rather, it read §1229b(a)'s text to support its conclusion that each alien must personally meet that section's durational requirements. But the Board also explained that "there [was] no precedent" in its decisions for imputing status or residence, and distinguished those statutory terms, on the ground just explained, from domicile or abandonment of [lawful permanent resident] status. And the Board argued that allowing imputation under §1229b(a) would create anomalies in administration of the statutory scheme by permitting even those who had not obtained [lawful permanent resident] status—or could not do so because of a criminal history—to become eligible for cancellation of removal. The Board therefore saw neither a "logical" nor a "legal" basis for adopting a policy of imputation. We see nothing in this decision to suggest that the Board thought its hands tied, or that it might have reached a different result if assured it could do so.

The Supreme Court granted certiorari in the case in September and heard oral arguments [JURIST reports] in January. In April, the court heard oral arguments [JURIST report] in Arizona v. United States to determine whether Arizona's controversial immigration [JURIST backgrounder] law is preempted by federal law.