The US Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear three cases , including Ashcroft v. Iqbal, et al. (07-1015) , in which the Court will consider whether high-ranking US officials are protected by qualified immunity from suit for alleged religious and ethnic discrimination by their subordinates. Javaid Iqbal, a Pakistani national detained during a terror [...]

The Supreme Court of Victoria Court of Appeal Monday upheld a December 2006 decision ordering a retrial of suspected terrorist Joseph Thomas , nicknamed "Jihad Jack" by the popular media. Thomas' original convictions for carrying a fake passport and receiving funds from terrorists were overturned when a lower court ruled that police had obtained statements [...]

A Singapore court Monday charged a US citizen and former Singapore lawyer with insulting a public servant after he published critical comments about a judge on his blog. California-based Gopalan Nair was arrested last week after accusing a judge presiding over a defamation case brought by former Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew against the [...]

The government of Bangladesh plans to release certain inmates who have served half their prison sentences in order to reduce the country's overcrowded prison populations, Bangladeshi officials said Monday. The prisoner release plan comes following the June announcement of a clampdown on crime . The prisons are now at triple their intended capacity, but Home [...]

The US Supreme Court handed down two decisions Monday, including Florida Dept. of Revenue v. Piccadilly Cafeterias , in which the Court ruled that a federal bankruptcy code provision exempting certain court-confirmed transfers from state and local transfer taxes applies only after the plan has been approved by a bankruptcy court. The Court found: The [...]

Kosovo's new constitution went into effect Sunday despite a declaration by Serbian President Boris Tadic that the charter of the breakaway Serbian province was legally void. The constitution was adopted by the Assembly of Kosovo in April and later certified by the European Union as guaranteeing the individual and community rights of all its citizens. [...]

Ali Hassan al-Majid , better known in the Western media as "Chemical Ali", denied involvement in the killing of Shi'ite civilians at a demonstration during the reign of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Al-Majid is charged with crimes against humanity for his alleged role in the violent suppression of a predominately Shi'a protest in southern [...]

UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband said Sunday that parliament would continue the process to ratify the EU reform treaty , formally known as the Treaty of Lisbon , despite an Irish referendum which rejected the treaty last week . Miliband said that even though the Treaty requires unanimous approval by all 27 EU member states, [...]

Officials from Pakistani co-ruling party Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) will soon present an impeachment motion against President Pervez Musharraf, a PML-N MP told a National Assembly meeting Sunday. PML-N and coalition partner Pakistan People's Party (PPP) officials have disagreed on how to limit or amend Musharraf's powers, with the PML-N generally favoring resignation or impeachment [...]

JURIST Contributing Editor Marjorie Cohn of Thomas Jefferson School of Law says that by upholding habeas corpus rights for Guantanamo detainees in Boumediene, the US Supreme Court has fulfilled its constitutional duty to check and balance the other two branches of government, discharging its mandate to interpret the Constitution and say "what the law is"… [...]