Marjorie Cohn is a professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, California. She has authored publications arguing against the legality of the 2003 US military intervention in Iraq as well as the US-led NATO interventions into Afghanistan and the former Yugoslavia. Professor Cohn is also a national board member of Assange [...]
Search Results for: state secrets privilege
Cambodia opposition leader sentenced to 27 years in prison for treason
A Cambodian court Friday sentenced leading opposition figure Kem Sokha to 27 years in prison for treason. Sokha was accused of developing a “secret plan” in cooperation with foreign organizations to overthrow Hun Sen’s government and was previously arrested in 2017 during a midnight raid involving hundreds of security personnel. The accusations against him have been [...]
The Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Monday proposed a 13-point plan to close Guantánamo Bay prison. Co-chairs Claire Finkelstein and Harvey Rishikof complied a diverse analysis of the prison to create a proposal that is both comprehensive and nonpartisan. Among the report’s 13 recommendations are a proposal [...]
Russia arrests another top Siberian scientist on suspected treason
Russia arrested a top scientist Saturday in Novosibirsk, just days after another scientist’s arrest in the same Siberian city. According to the Russian state news agency TASS, Anatoly Maslov was arrested on suspicion of treason. Citing a source close to the investigation, TASS claims that “Maslov is suspected of providing data that is a state [...]
US Supreme Court rules censure of elected individual does not violate First Amendment
The US Supreme Court Thursday ruled in a unanimous opinion that a member of an elected body does not have a viable First Amendment claim arising from verbal censure. The case Houston Community College System v. Wilson involved David Wilson, a former elected trustee of the Houston Community College System. Shortly after being elected to [...]
The US Supreme Court Friday unanimously ruled in favor of the FBI in Federal Bureau of Investigation v. Fazaga, holding that the state secrets privilege used to block the disclosure of information that the government finds harmful to national security is not displaced by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The lawsuit was filed in [...]
US Supreme Court rules against disclosing privileged information in CIA torture case
The US Supreme Court ruled Thursday in a 7-2 decision that information related to torture at CIA “black sites” is protected under the state secrets privilege, which allows the government to bar the release of information when it would endanger national security. Between December 2003 and September 2004, respondent Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn (Zubaydah), a [...]
Interview: Brennan Center's Elizabeth Goitein on Supreme Court Fight Against Government Surveillance
JURIST Deputy Features Editor Anne Bloomberg recently spoke with Elizabeth Goitein, director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program, about the case FBI v. Fazaga, for which the Supreme Court held oral arguments last week. The following has been edited and condensed for clarity. Anne Bloomberg (JURIST): Could you briefly explain [...]
Supreme Court hears oral arguments in surveillance and copyright cases
The United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments Monday in Federal Bureau of Investigation v. Fazaga and Unicolors, Inc. v. H&M Hennese & Mauritz. While neither case is particularly high profile, both involve subtle interpretations of surveillance and copyright law, respectively. In Fazaga, the FBI is being sued for allegedly conducting improper surveillance on a set [...]
North Carolina has an important connection to the “state secrets” at the center of an October 6 US Supreme Court argument. In this case, Guantanamo prisoner Abu Zubaydah seeks testimony from two former CIA contractors, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, on torture he suffered at a secret CIA prison in Poland. The contractors’ evidence would [...]