The United States is violating its universal human rights obligations by its failure to protect millions of illegal immigrant workers from exploitation and discrimination in the workplace, according to a petition filed with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) Wednesday. The petition was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Employment Law [...]

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Germany's Federal Constitutional Court has refused to rule on whether the European Constitution conforms with the German Constitution until a final decision on its ratification has been made. The German parliament ratified the document last year, but German President Horst Koehler refused to approve the ratification until the court issued its decision in the case, [...]

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Lawyers representing detainees held in the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay Wednesday petitioned the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to declare a portion of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA) unconstitutional. A key provision in the act, which was signed into law by US President George Bush last [...]

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The Southern Poverty Law Center filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday against the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) for its alleged harassment of five US citizens of Mexican descent during an illegal immigration shakedown in Georgia over Labor Day weekend. The civil rights group claims ICE violated the citizens' Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights [...]

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A Turkish trial court on Wednesday ruled that retired archaeologist Muazzez Ilmiye Cig violated no criminal law by writing historical accounts of headscarves that offended some Muslims. Cig faced up to 1 1/2 years' imprisonment for insulting religion by postulating in her book that headscarves were originally worn before the founding of Islam by ancient [...]

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