A judge for the US District Court for the District of South Dakota on Wednesday ruled that South Dakota’s ban on the use of tobacco in prisons infringes on the religious rights of Native American inmates. The Native American Council of Tribes (NACT), along with two individual plaintiffs, brought suit under the Religious Land Use [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit heard arguments Wednesday regarding the constitutionality of a voter-approved California law that requires police officers to take DNA samples of arrested persons suspected of committing a felony. Sitting en banc, the judges questioned California Attorney General Kamala Harris , raising concerns that the law may be [...]

Samsung announced Thursday that it will add the iPhone5 to its ongoing patent infringement lawsuit against Apple . Samsung filed a document in the US District Court for the Northern District of California alleging that it anticipates that the iPhone 5, like its predecessor, the iPhone 4S, will infringe on Samsung’s flagship smartphone, the Galaxy [...]

Jordan’s King Abdullah II on Monday endorsed by royal decree a law that requires Jordanian news websites to register with the government and obtain licenses. The law, which is part of a series of amendments to the Press and Publications Law of 1998 , also grants government authorities the ability to block and censor the [...]

A Serbian war crimes court on Wednesday convicted 11 former members of the Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) of war crimes committed in Kosovo in 1999, acquitting six others. The 11 convicted were sentenced to up to 15 years in prison for crimes including detaining and torturing 147 people and the torture and rape of [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist David Frakt of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law says that the continuing military detention of persons who have been cleared for release is an unjustifiable consequence of the political aspects of the war on terror…

The US Supreme Court on Wednesday denied a request by the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) for an injunction against use of Texas’s interim Congressional and legislative district maps in the 2012 congressional elections. The court denied the request without explanation. LULAC asked the court to reject the maps last week, saying the [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Tuesday reversed a district court ruling in favor of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) which had permitted regulations requiring the disclosure of political donors. The FEC regulations were promulgated from the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) . The regulation in question requires the [...]

The Italian Court of Cassation on Wednesday upheld the convictions of 23 former CIA officers for the 2003 kidnapping and rendition of Egyptian terror suspect Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr. Former Milan CIA station chief Robert Seldon Lady was originally sentenced to eight years in prison, while 22 other Americans were sentenced to five years after [...]

The UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, Maina Kiai on Wednesday condemned the recent violence that erupted after a US citizen released an anti-Islam film. Kiai stated that protests and rallies must be peaceful to be protected by international human rights law and noted that the right [...]