CACI International, Inc., et al. v. St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Co., US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, May 14, 2009 . Read the full text of the decision . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay urged the US Wednesday to hold accountable those accused of committing torture under the Bush administration. Pillay welcomed the US as a new member of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and lauded decisions by US President Barack Obama to ban torture and close CIA prisons and [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled Thursday that the insurance company for defense contractor CACI International’s has no duty to defend or indemnify CACI against claims of torture at Iraq prisons such as Abu Ghraib . CACI conceded that its insurance policy from St. Paul Fire & Marine Insurance Co. generally [...]

German Social Democratic Party (SPD) lawmakers said Thursday that they will not support a recently proposed bill that would ban paintball in response to a March school shooting that left 16 dead , including the 17-year-old gunman. The move came just two days after they had agreed on the proposal along with the Christian Democratic [...]

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Andrei Nesterenko said Thursday that Russia has proposed changes to the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE) . The 1990 treaty restricts the number of troops and heavy weapons that can be stationed between the Atlantic coast and Russia's Ural mountains. Russia suspended its responsibilities under the CFE in November 2007 [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist William G. Ross of Cumberland School of Law, Samford University, says that while the US Court Supreme Court might benefit from the nomination of an elected public official, President Obama should not nominate such a person to serve as a Justice merely for the sake of diversifying the Court… Some U.S. senators [...]

New Hampshire Governor John Lynch said Thursday that he is willing to sign a same-sex marriage bill into law, but only if the legislature amends it to make it clear that religious groups will not be required to perform or recognize the unions. The New Hampshire legislature gave final approval to the bill last week [...]

Spain's Cabinet approved a draft bill Thursday that would liberalize Spanish abortion law. The new bill, which must now be approved by Parliament, would give women the right to an abortion any time during the first fourteen weeks of pregnancy. During the next eight weeks an abortion would be allowed only if two doctors determined [...]

Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said Thursday that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) misled Congress about the use of enhanced interrogation techniques during the Bush administration. Pelosi, the former top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee , said that CIA officials had explicitly said that they were not using the [...]

The government of Myanmar received widespread international criticism after jailing democracy advocate and Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi Thursday for violating the terms of her house arrest. Myanmar's military junta arrested Suu Kyi after a US man swam across a lake to the compound in which she was confined and spent at least one [...]