Humanitarian Law Project et al. v. Michael V. Mukasey, United States Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit, December 10, 2007 . Read the full text of the opinion . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

The New Jersey Senate Monday voted 21-16 to pass a bill that would abolish the death penalty in the state and replace capital punishment with life in prison. The New Jersey Assembly is scheduled to vote on the bill Thursday , and proponents of the legislation hope it will pass both houses before the legislative [...]

Mark Earley : "The Eighth Circuit recently clarified the law surrounding government funding for faith-based services that address America's intractable social problems. Americans United for Separation of Church and State had challenged the state of Iowa's establishment of a voluntary faith-based pre-release program for prisoners launched by Prison Fellowship. In the ruling, the Eighth Circuit [...]

The judge presiding over the embezzlement proceedings against relatives of the late former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet stepped down from the case Monday after the defendants' lawyers accused him of bias. The Santiago Court of Appeals has not yet decided whether it will accept Judge Carlos Cerda's recusal. The accusations of bias stem from comments [...]

Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori pleaded not guilty Monday to charges of human rights abuses for allegedly ordering the 1992 murder of 25 people, including a professor and nine students at the so-called La Cantuta massacre at Lima's La Cantuta University. If convicted, Fujimori could be sentenced to up to 30 years in prison and [...]

South African Archbishop and Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu Monday criticized the United States and Great Britain for detaining terror suspects without trial, describing the practice as "a huge blot on democracy". He expressed surprise at the ease with which people had accepted government assertions that the indefinite detention of suspects at Guantanamo Bay was necessary [...]

The Iraqi government is mulling pardons for several thousand convicted insurgents, Iraqi government officials said Monday. A committee is being formed to draw up guidelines for issuing the pardons, including which offenses would be eligible for pardons and whether parliamentary approval would be required; a Sunni official from the office of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani [...]

A leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood , who is standing before a military trial in Egypt on money laundering and terror charges, Monday denounced the proceedings against him as a "farce." Deputy guide for the Brotherhood Khairat al-Shatir was among those Muslim Brotherhood members first arrested in a raid last December. They were initially [...]

Canadian-born financier and former media mogul Conrad Black was sentenced in a US federal court in Chicago Monday to 78 months in prison and ordered to pay $125,000 and forfeit another $1 million for his July conviction on mail fraud and obstruction of justice charges. Former Hollinger executives and Black co-defendants John Boultbee, Peter Atkinson [...]

A German state court in Hesse on Monday upheld a ban on religious headscarves for public school teachers and civil servants. The government in Hesse , which includes Frankfurt, passed the headscarf ban in 2004. The ban includes other items of clothing which could be seen as religious or political, but has an exemption for [...]