The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on Thursday obtained and made available a government handbook issued to the lawyers defending the illegal immigrants arrested in May during the massive raid on an Agriprocessors Inc. meatpacking plant in Iowa. The document contains pre-printed forms with blanks for the defendants' names, along with instructions for waiving constitutional [...]

The US Senate passed a bill late on Thursday designed to increase the safety of children's products by mandating new safety rules and restricting the kinds of materials which may be used. The legislation establishes a maximum level of lead, bans certain plastics, requires independent product testing and labeling, and strengthens the authority of the [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on Thursday affirmed a decision to dismiss claims filed by fifteen current and former inmates alleging that various employees of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DOC) violated their constitutional rights when they confiscated inmates' legal materials. After a DOC inmate filed fraudulent liens against a state [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Victor Flatt of the University of Houiston Law Center says the recent D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals decision to vacate the EPA’s implementation of the Clean Air Interstate Rule reminds us that the statutory mandates of our environmental laws are important, and that an individual administration cannot simply change or alter them [...]

Aaron Zisser : "The first week of the first trial at Guantánamo Bay did not seem, at first glance, particularly extraordinary. True, there were some obvious differences between civilian courts and the military commission courtroom hosting the trial of Salim Hamdan, accused of serving as a driver, bodyguard and weapons runner for Osama Bin Laden. [...]

US President George W. Bush issued an executive order on Thursday which gives the country's Director of National Intelligence the authority to coordinate information sharing between different US and foreign intelligence services, a duty previously held by the Central Intelligence Agency . The Director will also be authorized to make funding decisions for the various US [...]

A judge in the US District Court for the District of Columbia Thursday rejected arguments that senior White House officials are protected from congressional subpoena by executive privilege, ruling that former White House legal counsel Harriet Miers must testify before a House committee regarding the US Attorneys firing scandal . Judge John Bates did find [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit on Wednesday granted  prosecutors' petition for an en banc rehearing on whether the insider trading conviction of former Qwest Communications CEO Joseph Nacchio should be overturned. In March, a Tenth Circuit panel struck down Nacchio's conviction and ordered a new trial, finding that US District Judge [...]

The South African Constitutional Court on Thursday rejected a motion by politician Jacob Zuma to exclude evidence from his upcoming corruption trial. Zuma had argued that evidence seized in 2005 raids by the Directorate of Special Investigations should be thrown out because the raids violated his rights to privacy and a fair trial. The court [...]

Committee on the Judiciary, US House of Representatives v. Harriet Miers, et al., US District Court for the District of Columbia, July 31, 2008 . Read the full text of the opinion . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.