The population of individuals in US prisons rose by 2.7 percent in 2005, according to an annual report released Wednesday by the US Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics . The report indicates that over 7 million people were either in jail, on probation, or on parole by the end of last year, with [...]

Mayfield v. United States, US District Court for the District of Oregon, November 29, 2006 . Read the full text of the settlement . Read the associated US Government apology [PDF}. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) decided Wednesday to move Serb nationalist war crimes suspect Vojislav Seselj to a hospital unit adjoining its detention center at Scheveningen near The Hague to monitor his medical condition. Seselj has been on hunger strike for over two weeks, while demanding that the ICTY dismiss his [...]

Draft report on the alleged use of European countries by the CIA for the transport and illegal detention of prisoners, European Parliament, November 28, 2006 . Read the full text of the report . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

The Canadian Parliament will revisit the issue of same-sex marriage next week, with debate on a federal law permitting same-sex marriage scheduled to begin in the House of Commons Wednesday. The ruling Conservative Party in June promised to reconsider the law , which was passed in 2005 under the leadership of former Liberal Prime Minister [...]

US District Judge Richard J. Leon ruled in Washington, DC, Wednesday that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) must reinstate certain housing payments for victims of Hurricane Katrina . Leon granted the plaintiff's motion for a preliminary injunction against the payments stoppage, maintaining that FEMA had failed to provide evacuees with adequate explanations for their [...]

Gary Buseck : "Mitt Romney is about to leave the Massachusetts governorship and enter a presidential primary campaign built almost exclusively around his opposition to the now recognized right of liberty and equality under the Massachusetts constitution for two loving people to marry. While he's certainly entitled to his angst over the legislature's vote to [...]

Jackson Chin : "Plaintiffs counsel have challenged local ordinances in Hazleton, PA based on their unconstitutional and ambitious sweep in attempting to regulate immigrant residents. Misguided at best, these laws are preempted by and violate a number of federal laws. The passage and defense of such local anti-immigrant laws are part of an organized effort [...]

The US government agreed to pay $2 million Wednesday in a settlement agreement with Brandon Mayfield, the attorney arrested and detained for two weeks in May 2004 after the FBI mistakenly established that his fingerprints matched those found on a bag containing detonators used in the 2004 Madrid terrorist train bombings . Mayfield, a Muslim [...]

Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) has settled fraud allegations under the False Claims Act , the US Justice Department said Wednesday, and has agreed to pay the US $8 million for allegedly overcharging the Army for logistical support it provided between 1999 and 2000. The DOJ alleged that KBR double-billed the military and [...]