to make quality, affordable health care available to all Americans, reduce costs, improve health care quality, enhance disease prevention, and strengthen the health care workforce, and for other purposes, US Senate, December 24, 2009 . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here. Latest commentary available here. JURIST has more on health care reform.

Dan Stein : "Reading through H.R. 4321, Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America's Security and Prosperity (CIR ASAP), what is immediately evident is that the bill will deliver neither reform, nor security, nor prosperity for Americans. The legislation introduced December 15 by Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) would dismantle whatever vestige of meaningful immigration enforcement that the [...]

The Supreme Court of Pakistan on Wednesday released the detailed judgment on the July 2007 decision to reinstate Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry . The July 2007 ruling came in response to the suspension of Chaudhry from the court by then-president Pervez Musharraf in March 2007. In the judgment explaining the 10-3 decision, the court [...]

The US Senate passed a health care reform bill on Thursday in a 60 – 39 vote that split down party lines. The legislation would expand affordable access to health care to more than 30 million Americans and overhaul the private health insurance system . Senate Republicans have vowed to continue to fight and amend [...]

The military prison at Guantanamo Bay may have to remain open until 2011 to allow an Illinois prison time to prepare for the arrival of the detainees, according to Wednesday reports . A spokesperson for Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) said that the government's plan to purchase the Thomson Correctional Center in Illinois and refit it [...]

Prominent Chinese rights activist Liu Xiaobo was tried Wednesday on charges of inciting subversion. The trial lasted only two hours and was closed to foreign diplomats. Liu, who spent two years in prison following the Tiananmen Square uprising, has long challenged China's one-party rule, and co-authored Charter 08 , a petition calling for political reforms [...]

Former Argentine president Carlos Menem was indicted by the Federal Court on Tuesday on corruption charges. Menem is charged with overpaying government officials while he was in office from 1989 to 1999. Menem's well-known minister of economy, Domingo Cavallo , was indicted on similar charges. Cavallo is known for his economic reforms from 1991 to [...]

Elizabeth Samson : "On January 22, 2009, President Obama issued an executive order to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay within a year and on December 15 he announced his plan to transfer Guantanamo detainees to the Thompson Correctional Center in Illinois. The President is trying to make good on his campaign promise to close [...]

The Russian Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the 2003 arrest of Platon Lebedev , business partner of former Yukos oil executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky , was illegal. The court agreed to review Lebedev's arrest last week after the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled in 2007 that Lebedev's arrest and pre-trial detention violated his right [...]

An Argentine court on Tuesday sentenced former judge Victor Brusa to 21 years in prison for crimes against humanity during the country's 1976-83 "Dirty War" . The Federal Court of Santa Fe found Brusa guilty of eight counts of crimes against humanity in his capacity as a judicial officer during the dictatorship. The court also [...]