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 [...]

Samuel Abiodun Adebowale : "In Chicago (USA), a U.S. District Court admitted a claim to investigate the responsibility of a former Nigerian head of state, Gen. Abubakar Abdulsalami, for gross violation of human rights in Nigeria between November 1993 and May 1999. The case was filed by some Nigerian victims under Abubakar's regime. The court [...]

Italian Judge Oscar Magi on Wednesday ordered the continuation of the trial of 26 Americans and several former Italian intelligence officials for the 2003 abduction and rendition of Egyptian cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr . Magi suspended the trial in October pending a ruling from the Constitutional Court of Italy on a petition filed by [...]

US Magistrate Judge John Facciola Tuesday ordered the White House to explain why it should not be required to create forensic copies of all e-mails passed through computers in the Executive Office of the President between March 2003 to October 2005. In his order, Facciola referred to a January admission by the White House that [...]

The US Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a Louisiana death sentence should be overturned because the trial judge "committed clear error" in ruling on the defendant's objection to a prosecution peremptory jury challenge, which the defendant argued was based on race. The ruling came in Snyder v. Louisiana , where Allen Snyder was convicted and [...]

Germany's Federal Constitutional Court on Wednesday placed an injunction on a federal law that gave the government the ability to access and collect Internet and telephone data. The law, which went into effect in January, allowed the government to collect information such as e-mail addresses, numbers dialed, and lengths of calls from service providers. The [...]