Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday that he favors the immediate closure of all detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay , adding that he would also "get rid" of the framework created by the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA) and instead prosecute terrorist suspects under existing federal law or military courts. In [...]

State Secrets: China's Legal Labyrinth, Human Rights in China, June 11, 2007 . Read the full text of the report . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

At least one-third of the 37 immigration judges appointed by the Justice Department since 2004 are highly-connected Republicans or Bush administration insiders and half of those appointed lacked prior experience in immigration law, the Washington Post reported Monday. Immigration judges, who sit alone on cases, annually deport approximately 250,000 people from the United States. The [...]

Lebanon's Supreme Judicial Council convened Monday to discuss the nomination of 12 Lebanese judges to be considered by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for appointment to the Special Tribunal for Lebanon , established under UN Security Council Resolution 1757 to investigate and try suspects in the February 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri . [...]

South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun criticized South Korea's election laws Sunday, saying that the country's political system with a single five-year presidential term was "underdeveloped" and should be reformed. Roh also criticized the country's political neutrality laws and rejected last Thursday's ruling by the National Election Commission that Roh violated the neutrality laws by repeating [...]

The US Supreme Court handed down decisions in five cases Monday, including Watson v. Philip Morris , where the Court held that a lawsuit against the tobacco company could not be removed from state to federal court solely based on an argument that the tobacco industry is regulated by the Federal Trade Commission. Philip Morris [...]

A European Union human rights team expressed the EU's "deep concern" at the state of human rights in Bangladesh under President Iajuddin Ahmed's interim government at the conclusion of a visit to the country Saturday, flagging reports of extra-judicial killings, torture and intimidation alleged to have taken place as part of the government's "anti-corruption campaign" [...]

Egypt's Supreme Administrative Court ruled Saturday against an American University of Cairo (AUC) ban on women wearing the Muslim niqab on campus, finding that the private university could not require a plaintiff student to unveil her face because it was her constitutional right under Egyptian law to practice her religion. The court nonetheless said it [...]

The lower house of the parliament of Rwanda voted Friday to abolish the death penalty effective July 1, with the hope that the measure will prompt other countries to extradite defendants facing trial for the 1994 Rwandan genocide back to Rwanda. Although the final vote was 45-5, 30 members of the assembly were absent. The [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Margaret Burnham of Northeastern University School of Law says the trial of alleged Klansman James Seale, accused of kidnapping and then drowning two young men in southwest Mississippi in May 1964, highlights both Mississippi's historical role in Klan violence and the grievous shortcomings of federal law enforcement in the civil rights era… [...]