A US District Court judge Thursday dismissed a civil suit accusing Pope Benedict XVI of conspiring to conceal clergy sex abuse , citing the pontiff's immunity as head of the Vatican state . Judge Lee Rosenthal, of the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas, ruled in response to a "Suggestion of Immunity" [...]

Saddam Hussein and his seven co-defendants previously denied in court that they had been beaten by American guards, Iraqi investigative judge Raed Juhi said Thursday. Hussein alleged earlier this week in trial proceedings that he had been beaten "everywhere on my body" and that American abuse denials could not be believed . Juhi, who prepared [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Jordan Paust of the University of Houston Law Center says that contrary to assertions by President Bush and the US Department of Justice, post-9/11 Congressional legislation on the use of military force against terrorists does not authorize domestic spying… George W. Bush and US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales claim that domestic spying [...]

Amendment to An Act to amend the USA PATRIOT ACT to extend the sunset of certain provisions of that Act and the lone wolf provision of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 to July 1, 2006, passed by the US House of Representatives, December 22, 2005 . Read the full text of [...]

Abu Bakker Qassim et al. v. George W. Bush et al., United States District Court for the District of Columbia, Judge James Robertson, December 22, 2005 . Excerpt: These petitioners are Chinese nationals who received military training in Afghanistan under the Taliban. China is keenly interested in their return. An order requiring their release into [...]

The US Senate has voted to approve the one-month extension of the Patriot Act passed by the House of Representatives earlier Thursday after House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. James Sesenbrenner blocked a six-month Senate extension on the grounds that the original Patriot Act conference report making key provisions of the Act permanent needed to be [...]

Summary of legal authority supporting National Securitry Agency surveillance activities, letter from the US Department of Justice Office of Legislative Affairs to senior members of the US Senate and House Intelligence Committees, December 22, 2005 . Read the full text of the DOJ letter .

A federal judge ruled Thursday that two Chinese Uighur detainees held by the US at Guantanamo Bay could be detained there indefinitely even though their imprisonment was unlawful. US District Judge James Robertson said that the courts simply had no relief to offer the men, who are no longer deemed enemy combatants by the government [...]

AP is reporting that the US House of Representatives has passed a one-month extension of the Patriot Act , significantly less than the six-month extension approved by the Senate Wednesday night. 4:32 PM ET – House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) objected to the six-month extension, and the one-month holdover good until February [...]

The Texas Third Court of Appeals Thursday denied a request by US Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) to hasten his appeals process by reducing allowable filing periods from 20 to five days. Prosecutors are appealing the dismissal of the conspiracy charge against DeLay, and Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle has requested that his trial for [...]