JURIST Special Guest Columnist Shayana Kadidal, senior managing attorney of the Guantanamo project at the Center for Constitutional Rights, says that the timing of military commissions convening authority Susan Crawford's admission in the last days of the Bush administration that a Guantanamo detainee he represents was tortured should not be allowed to open the door [...]

JURIST Contributing Editor Michael Kelly of Creighton University School of Law says the pending closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison by executive order of new US President Barack Obama pointedly leaves open the politically and legally troubling question of what to do with all the detainees… President Barack Obama's executive order to close down the [...]

The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in two cases. In Corley v. United States , the Court heard arguments on whether federal statutory and case law require suppression of a confession given more than six hours after arrest but before the defendant is presented to a judge if law enforcement authorities unreasonably delay [...]

A law requiring Romanian telecommunications companies to retain information on all telephone calls, text messages, and emails went into effect on Tuesday. The law requires that basic information like the phone numbers or email addresses involved in the communications be recorded so that prosecutors can access the information if it relates to an investigation, but [...]

Proposed amendments to the Russian Constitution extending term limits for the president and members of parliament officially took effect Wednesday when the text of the updated constitution was published in the state newspaper Rossiikaya Gazeata . Under Russian law, constitutional amendments take legal effect the day they are published in the newspaper. The amendments extending [...]

The Paris prosecutor's office on Tuesday announced that it has opened an investigation into the French business operations of US financier Bernard Madoff , following accusations of abuse of confidence and fraud. The inquiry was sparked by a French citizen's suit against the Swiss firm UBS for fraud and betrayal of trust, after the firm [...]

The US Supreme Court issued decisions in five cases Wednesday. The Court ruled unanimously in Pearson v. Callahan that the test for whether a government official is entitled to qualified immunity, established by the Court in 2001 in Saucier v. Katz , is no longer mandatory in every case. Under Saucier, a judge first had [...]

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich on Tuesday allowed a second deadline to lapse without filing formal answers to his impeachment charges . The Illinois State Senate established a January 17 deadline to file an answer and a January 20 deadline to seek dismissal of the charges, with impeachment proceedings set to begin January 26. A spokesperson [...]

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel on Tuesday sent a memorandum to agency and department leaders requesting the review of pending regulations that were advanced late in the administration of former US President George W. Bush . The memo, issued just hours into the administration of President Barack Obama , calls for 60-day extensions [...]

Lawyers for the families of 213 Chinese children sickened or killed by melamine-contaminated milk petitioned the Supreme People's Court , China's highest court, to hear a class action lawsuit against 22 dairy companies involved in the contamination. The petition, mailed last Friday, seeks more than $5 million in compensation from the companies, including individual amounts more [...]