The US Supreme Court handed down four decisions Thursday, including Hudson v. Michigan where the Court held 5-4 that evidence collected under a search warrant is admissible even when police officers failed to knock before entering a home. The Court upheld a Michigan court ruling which determined that evidence seized during a search of Booker [...]

Mexican lawmakers began working this week to revive a bill that will decriminalize personal drug possession – or possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine and heroin. Lawmakers hope to override a potential veto by Mexican President Vicente Fox , who announced plans to sign the bill, but then reversed his position after the US [...]

The Russian Duma , the lower house of parliament, on Wednesday voted 359-53 to pass a bill that will shorten the military conscription requirement from two years to one, beginning in January 2008. The bill is expected to gain approval from the Federation Council , Russia's upper house, within the month and be signed into [...]

A court in Japan has ruled that journalists have a right not to disclose the identities of their sources. The Tokyo High Court on Wednesday reversed a district court order that a newspaper reporter testify in an American company's lawsuit against the US government. Presiding Judge Nobuo Akatsuka wrote in the High Court's ruling that [...]

UK Foreign Minister Margaret Beckett said Thursday that Britain will take custody of former Liberian President Charles Taylor if he is convicted by the Special Court for Sierra Leone , as long as authorizing legislation is passed by parliament. In a statement , Beckett said that as long as parliament passes new legislation to permit [...]

The US government can detain non-citizens indefinitely on the basis of religion, race or national origin, a federal judge ruled Wednesday, saying that "the executive is free to single out 'nationals of a particular country' and focus enforcement efforts on them" under his interpretation of immigration law . Judge John Gleeson of the US District [...]

The US military has canceled regular visits between detainees at Guantanamo Bay and their lawyers this week after three prisoners committed suicide last weekend, according to the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) , which represents many of the 460 detainees. Government officials told the CCR that no guards are available to supervise attorney-client visits because [...]

Italian prosecutors finished an investigation on Wednesday into the 2005 killing of Italian intelligence agent Nicola Calipari by a US soldier, but have not yet decided if they will charge US Army Specialist Mario Lozano with murder. Calipari was shot to death while driving to the Baghdad airport after securing the release of Italian journalist [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Jordan Paust of the University of Houston Law Center says that the new US Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation now being drafted should drop sections that would perpetuate unlawful treatment and illegally differentiate between standards of treatment applicable to prisoners of war and non-prisoners of war… Various media reports indicate that [...]

A military lawyer representing Yemeni Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, one of ten Guantanamo Bay detainees awaiting trial before a military commission , filed a motion Wednesday to move al-Bahlul's trial to a Navy base in the United States, claiming that the Guantanamo restrictions make it impossible to hold a fair trial. Army Major Tom Fleener complained [...]