US Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced a bill Tuesday entitled the "Personal Data Privacy and Security Act of 2007" designed to protect the personal information of American consumers. The legislation resembles a bill Leahy co-sponsored with then-Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) in 2005, which was not enacted in the [...]

Dukes v. Wal-Mart, Inc., US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, February 6, 2006 . Read the full text of the opinion . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Murat Kurnaz , a Turkish citizen born in Germany and formerly held at Guantanamo Bay , plans to request the release of secret military documents pertaining to his detention, according to his lawyer as reported in Wednesday's Der Tagesspiegel . Kurnaz seeks the documents in relation to a lawsuit he filed in December against the [...]

The Ku Klux Klan is experiencing "a surprising and troubling resurgence" largely on the issue of Hispanic immigration, according to a report released Tuesday by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) . In addition to exploiting fears of non-white immigration, the KKK is also using gay marriage and urban crime to fuel the recent growth of existing [...]

US Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty testified before the US Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday that thirteen or more federal prosecutors who have been removed over the past two years were not victims of political retaliation, as some Democrats have alleged. McNulty specifically denied that the removal of former US Attorney Carol Lam , who prosecuted [...]

Emi MacLean : "On Friday, the Department of Defense announced charges against three detainees in Guantánamo – Omar Khadr, Salim Hamdan, and David Hicks. These three men promise to be test cases. Their proposed commission hearings will force an examination of the intelligence value of the military base at Guantánamo, the coercive interrogation tactics that [...]

A judge has ruled that Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi and former PM Silvio Berlusconi will not give evidence at the preliminary hearing of Nicolo Pollari, the former head of Italian Intelligence and Security Services , to determine his involvement in the alleged 2003 CIA kidnapping and rendition of Egyptian cleric Moustafa Hassan Nasr . [...]

The Inter-American Conference on Human Rights (IACHR) has scheduled a hearing to explore whether failing to curb greenhouse gas emissions constitutes a human rights violation. The environmental group EarthJustice announced Tuesday that it had received a letter in which the IACHR said it would hold a hearing on the topic. The hearing, set for March [...]

The office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights announced Tuesday that UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Philip Alston will go to the Philippines next week to investigate political murders in the country. Alston will report his conclusions to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour . According to [...]

Afghan President Hamid Karzai is expected to reject a proposed amnesty resolution that would grant pardons for crimes committed during the 25 years of war in Afghanistan , according to spokesman Karim Rahimi on Monday. Rahimi said the president believed the bill to be against basic constitutional principles and Islamic laws, because only victims of [...]