The Constitutional Court of Turkey Thursday struck down recent amendments to the country's constitution designed to ease a ban on headscarves in universities, finding that they violated the country's secular principles. Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) had proposed the amendments to ensure equal access to higher education, but the pro-secular opposition Republican People's [...]

A court-martial panel Wednesday acquitted a US Marine intelligence officer charged in connection with the November 2005 killings of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha . US Marine Corps 1st Lt. Andrew Grayson had been charged with multiple violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) , including making a false official statement, obstructing justice, [...]

Kim Soo A : "First of all, I congratulate the people of Nepal on its transition into a Secular, Federal Democratic Republic. The declaration made on 28 May 2008 by the Constituent Assembly of Nepal is a remarkable milestone in Nepal's history and is the success of democracy and democratic values. Transformation of a state [...]

The prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) Wednesday asked the UN Security Council to extend the ICTR's mandate so that the court can complete all war crimes trials. Hassan Bubacar Jallow said in a report that the recent arrests of several Rwandan genocide suspects meant that the court would not have time [...]

The US District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma granted a preliminary injunction Wednesday blocking the enforcement of employer-related provisions of Oklahoma's controversial immigration law . Judge Robin Cauthron concluded that it is "substantially likely" that the provisions are preempted by federal immigration law, and that there was a risk of harm to the [...]

The Third Appellate District of the California Court of Appeal Wednesday ruled that a plan to ease prison overcrowding by transferring prisoners to out-of-state facilities does not violate the state constitution . The California Correctional Peace Officers Association and Service Employees International Union had challenged the plan, alleging that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had exceeded his [...]

Elisa Mari, Pitt Law '10, files from Athens: Tuesday morning at 7:30 am, Tasos Aliferis, the Mayor of Tilos – a small Greek island in the eastern Aegean – formally married two homosexual couples. The first couple to get married at dawn were gay, the second couple was lesbian. The whole ceremony happened without any [...]

Terror suspects should be tried in military commissions, not federal courts, US Attorney General Michael Mukasey said in a Wednesday speech to judges at the 2008 DC Circuit Judicial Conference . Mukasey said that sending terror cases to civilian courts could require the release of sensitive national security information, but human rights groups have argued [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Benjamin Davis of the University of Toledo College of Law says that the processes and procedures of the United States military commission system being used to try alleged terrorists at Guantanamo Bay (GTMO) are a betrayal of the high standards for international criminal justice pioneered by American officials at the Nuremberg trials [...]

The Virginia-based National Black Farmers Association (NBFA) brought a class action lawsuit against the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Monday, alleging on behalf of over 800 black farmers that the USDA improperly discriminated against them in its allocation of resources. The new Farm Bill expressly permits the new claims, but the Farm Bill's future is [...]