US Air Force Reserve Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann , a top Pentagon legal advisor on the Guantanamo military commission trials, said Wednesday that he will not resign despite questions concerning his objectivity. Hartmann serves as legal advisor to Susan J. Crawford, the Convening Authority for the military commissions, but last week was disqualified from participating [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Christina Wells of the University of Missouri School of Law says that to restrict peaceful protests aimed at disseminating a message simply because we find that message offensive is inconsistent with common sense notions of privacy and the spirit of the First Amendment…. Since 2006 the Reverend Fred Phelps and the Westboro [...]

Amrit Singh : "For almost four years now, the ACLU has been litigating under the Freedom of Information Act for the disclosure of government documents relating to the torture of prisoners held in U.S. custody abroad since September 11, 2001. The Bush administration, however, continues to fight tooth and nail to withhold key policy documents [...]

A Texas appeals court Wednesday overturned a jury verdict that found pharmaceutical giant Merck liable for the death of a 71-year-old man who died from a heart attack within a month of taking Merck's painkiller Vioxx . The jury had ordered Merck to pay $32 million in damages to the family of Leonel Garza – [...]

A Polish judge ruled on Wednesday that prosecutors must amend their indictment against former communist leader General Wojciech Jaruzelski and other former communist officials to present a greater range of evidence against the defendants. Jaruzelski was charged in March 2006 with "organizing crimes of a military nature" and "carrying out crimes that consisted of the [...]

The Danish government said Wednesday that it would propose new legislation to ban sitting judges from wearing religious dress , including Islamic headscarves, in court. Also Wednesday, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen criticized Immigration Minister Birthe Roenn Hornbech for writing a newspaper editorial published Tuesday opposing the proposal; Rasmussen said that she should have [...]

The UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) announced Wednesday that it will conduct a public inquiry into the death of Baha Mousa , an Iraqi hotel receptionist who died in British military custody in 2003. Mousa's death allegedly occurred as the result of abuse at the hands of British troops who had arrested him and nine [...]

The Indiana Court of Appeals Tuesday ruled that a 2006 state law barring convicted sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of a school, public park or youth center is unconstitutional as applied to offenders who purchased their homes before the law went into effect. The ruling upholds a lower court decision finding that the [...]

Lane Dilg : "In 2006, Ginnah Muhammad went to Michigan small claims court to recover $3000 from a rental-car company that she believed unfairly charged her for repairs. A state judge gave her a choice: remove the niqab she wore as a matter of religious practice before testifying, or he would dismiss her claim. As [...]

The curator of a Russian art gallery has been charged with "inciting hatred" for hosting an exhibit of art banned from other galleries, including pieces that mocked the Russian Orthodox Church and the nation's military, the Independent reported Wednesday. Yury Samodurov, director of the Sakharov Museum in Moscow, named after Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, said [...]