Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf appealed to anti-government lawyers on Thursday to not "spread anarchy," a day after a clash between opposing groups of lawyers in Karachi prompted widespread rioting and led to at least 11 deaths. Lawyers supporting Musharraf who gathered to protest other lawyers' beating of former Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Sher Afgan Niazi [...]

A criminal court in Afghanistan is trying detainees previously held by the US detainees at Bagram Air Base and Guantanamo Bay and is relying primarily on allegations and evidence provided by the US military, the New York Times reported Thursday. Other countries have so far refused to use evidence provided by the US military over [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit brought by Kentucky high school student Timothy Morrison against the Boyd County Board of Education over a 2004 policy that banned Morrison and other students from expressing their opposition to homosexuality. Judge Deborah L. Cook , in a 2-1 ruling, said that [...]

Khaled El-Masri , the German citizen allegedly kidnapped by the CIA in 2003, petitioned the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) Wednesday alleging he was tortured by the CIA. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) petitioned the IACHR, an autonomous arm of the Organization of American States (OAS) , on behalf of El-Masri, arguing that [...]

Betsy Griffing : "This challenge to the lethal injection protocol is based primarily upon violation of the Montana Constitution, rather than violations of the United States Constitution. We feel that two provisions in the Montana Constitution make this challenge particularly strong. First, we are claiming that the three-drug formula used by the Montana Department of [...]

Timothy Morrison, et al., v. Board of Education of Boyd County, et al., US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, April 9, 2008 . Read the full text of the opinion . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Deborah Colson : "In a March 2003 Office of Legal Counsel memorandum, released for the first time last week, John Yoo justified the use of cruel interrogation techniques on "unlawful combatants held outside the United States" – including prisoners at Guantánamo Bay – by claiming that the president's commander-in-chief authority trumps federal and international law [...]

Opposing groups of Pakistani lawyers clashed with each other in the city of Karachi Wednesday, prompting widespread rioting that led to at least seven deaths. Lawyers supporting Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf who gathered to protest the Tuesday lawyers' beating in Lahore of former Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Sher Afgan Niazi were confronted after their meeting [...]

The Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced Tuesday that it will not allow the new UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) envoy on Israeli human rights to enter either Israel or the Palestinian territories after he called current Israeli actions against Palestinians a "Holocaust in the making." In a Tuesday BBC interview, Richard Falk , who [...]

The US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform issued a subpoena Wednesday to compel the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to turn over documents relating to White House involvement in the EPA decision to deny California's request for a greenhouse emissions waiver in December 2007 . In a statement, Committee Chairman Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) [...]