The World Trade Organization (WTO) on Friday ruled that Airbus received illegal subsidies from European governments, according to sources familiar with the unreleased decision. The preliminary ruling came in response to a complaint filed by the US Trade Representative alleging that the subsidies caused material harm to US aircraft manufacturer Boeing , in violation of [...]

Barry Steinhardt : "Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials have a legitimate power to search for contraband goods crossing national borders. But searching laptops is not a search of goods. It is a search of a storehouse of information – private correspondence, financial and medical records, business records. It is a search of speech protected [...]

Christopher Huther and Jeremy Keim : "On August 28, 2009, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued an opinion in Comcast Corporation v. FCC, which vacated the FCC's 30% limit on the number of subscribers to which a cable operator could offer service. This cap, created in 1993, was initially intended [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled Friday that former attorney general John Ashcroft is not entitled to absolute and qualified immunity, allowing an unlawful detention lawsuit by US citizen Abdullah Al-Kidd to go forward. At the heart of the case is whether the Department of Justice (DOJ) policy of using the [...]

Al-Kidd v. Ashcroft, US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, September 4, 2009 . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here. Latest commentary available here. JURIST has more on John Ashcroft.

Former US soldier Steven Green was sentenced Friday to five consecutive life terms in prison for the rape and murder of an Iraqi teenage girl and the murder of her family in Mahmudiya. A federal jury in the US District Court for the Western District of Kentucky , which convicted Green in May, failed to [...]

Lawyers for Myanmar opposition pro-democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi said Friday that the Divisional Court in Rangoon has agreed to hear an appeal of her recent conviction for violating state security laws. Suu Kyi was sentenced to an additional 18 months of house for allowing American John Yettaw to stay in her home after [...]

A Canadian court on Thursday sentenced Saad Khalid to 14 years in prison for his involvement in plotting to attack targets in Toronto, Canada . Khalid, one of the so-called "Toronto 18" , was credited with seven years for time served. Khalid pleaded guilty in May to one count of participating in a militant plot [...]

The US Department of the Treasury on Thursday lifted travel restrictions and restrictions on money transfers between Cuban-Americans and their families in Cuba. The department also authorized US telecommunications companies work within Cuba to facilitate communication between families split between the two countries. The move was championed by Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) , who said [...]

A federal judicial panel on Thursday denied California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's request to stay an order to reduce the prison population in the state. The request stemmed from an August ruling mandating that California reduce its prison population by nearly 43,000 inmates in response to a lawsuit by two inmates alleging that overcrowding in California [...]