A Chilean court convicted 24 former Chilean police officers of human rights violations on Wednesday for their role in the 1973 murders of 30 leftist prisoners. A woman who survived the incident, which took place during the regime of former dictator Augusto Pinochet , testified that the officers tortured and shot some 30 inmates, and [...]

Seventeen Chinese Uighur Muslims detained at Guantanamo Bay for six years have still not been told why they are being held at the military facility, according to a letter written by one of the detainees and released by his lawyers Wednesday. According to Abdulghappar Turkistani, he and other Uighur detainees hoped that the US would [...]

JURIST Contributing Editor Haider Ala Hamoudi of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law says that the mixed success to date of Iraqi legislative initiatives aimed at rebuilding the country's legal order suggests that true progress and stabilization beyond the mere enactment of laws may require an Iraqi commitment to a long term US troop [...]

US military judge Navy Capt. Keith Allred has affirmed a prior ruling that lawyers for Guantanamo Bay detainee Salim Ahmed Hamdan may send written questions to Khalid Sheik Mohammed and other alleged high-level al Qaeda detainees. In a Friday ruling made public Wednesday, Allred found that questioning the detainees could lead to the discovery of [...]

Kenya should not grant amnesty to anyone who committed human rights violations in the wake of December's disputed presidential election , according to a report issued Wednesday by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights . The report offered nine recommendations for re-establishing stability in the country, including establishing a Truth Justice [...]

Iraq's Presidency Council Wednesday withdrew its objections to a provincial elections law detailing the relationship between Iraq's central and local governments. In a statement issued Wednesday, the three-member Presidency Council, comprised of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi , and Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi , indicated that the law may now take effect [...]

The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in Chamber of Commerce v. Brown , 06-939, a case where the Court is reviewing the constitutionality of a 2000 California law that prohibits employers from using certain funds they receive from the state to influence union elections. During arguments Wednesday, Justice Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice [...]

US District Judge David Lawson of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan on Tuesday dismissed with prejudice a constitutional challenge to Proposal 2 , an amendment to the Michigan Constitution banning affirmative action in public employment, public education, and state contracting. The case was a consolidation of two lawsuits filed [...]

John Lott : "Strangely, oral arguments about DC's gun ban turned on discussions of gun locks as much as anything else. Machine guns might have seemed to be a flashier topic, but gun locks were mentioned more frequently, being raised 31 times during the arguments. The question was central to the case because both the [...]

Aisling Reidy : "On March 13, the defense for Omar Khadr had some fairly basic objectives – to get the government to disclose evidence, such as notes relating to the interrogation of their client when he was 15 years old, so that they could prepare their defense. They also wanted to take a deposition from [...]