Arizona Contractors Association et al. v. Janet Napolitano et al., United States District Court for the District of Arizona, Decem,ber 7, 2007 . Read the full text of the order . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

The City of Chicago is willing to pay $20 million to settle lawsuits filed by four former death row inmates who claim to have been tortured by Chicago Police officers during interrogations before being wrongly convicted, local media reported Saturday. The settlement is contingent upon approval by the city's aldermen next week. The four men [...]

US Marine Sgt. Jermaine A. Nelson was charged Friday with the November 2004 murder of an Iraqi detainee in Fallujah . This is the second time Nelson has been charged with the murder. The original charges against him were initially dropped, but upon review of the case, the military decided to proceed. Nelson faces an [...]

A federal judge Friday dismissed a lawsuit challenging a new Arizona law aimed at preventing employers from knowingly hiring illegal immigrants . The Legal Arizona Workers Act , enacted in July, gives the Superior Courts of Arizona power to suspend or revoke the business licenses of businesses that intentionally or knowingly employ illegal immigrants. Under [...]

Six French charity workers accused of complicity in an abortive effort by French charity Zoe's Ark to airlift so-called "Darfur orphans" out of Chad to Europe went on a hunger strike in the Chadian capital of N'Djamena Saturday to protest the way the Chadian legal probe into their case has been conducted, according to AFP. [...]

German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble and his 16 regional counterparts have consider Scientology "an organization that is not compatible with the constitution", and will work to ban it in Germany, Schäuble said at the end of a two-day ministerial meeting Friday. The German government regards Scientology as a money-making organization, not a faith ; a [...]

UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro has concluded that at least 31 people were killed in a crackdown on anti-government protesters this September, according to UN sources Friday. The total is significantly higher than the figure of 10 originally claimed by the government, later upped to 15. [...]

US Department of Justice lawyers advised the CIA's general counsel in 2003 not to destroy videotapes showing the "harsh interrogations" of high-value terror detainees Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri , according to unnamed officials cited by the New York Times in a report Saturday. Scott W. Muller allegedly raised the option of destroying the [...]

An emerging deal to select a new Lebanese president ran into a roadblock Friday as political factions in Lebanon's parliament failed to agree on mechanisms for changing a problematic constitutional provision. The favored candidate to replace now ex-president Emile Lahoud is Gen. Michel Suleiman , but under the present Lebanese constitution the presidency cannot be [...]

Margaret R. Chambers v. Cassandra B. Ormiston, Supreme Court of Rhode Island, December 7, 2007 . Read the full text of the opinion . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.