Federal appeals judge Michael Chertoff told a Senate committee Wednesday that if he were confirmed as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security he would balance "the imperatives of security with the preservation of liberty and privacy." Testifying before the Senate Homeland and Governmental Affairs Committee in the wake of news reports that as head [...]

Outgoing US Attorney General John Ashcroft took some parting shots Tuesday at a recent Supreme Court sentencing ruling and at critics opposed to renewal of the Patriot Act. Addressing a staunchly conservative crowd at Washington's Heritage Foundation , Ashcroft argued that the low crime rate reported in the last several years was a direct result [...]

The American Bar Association has called on President Bush to launch an independent investigation into "hundreds of alleged incidents of torture, even including murder, practiced against Iraqi civilians in U.S. military custody." In a letter to the President Tuesday, the lawyers' group expressed alarm at the reports, noting that the military in many instances had [...]

A second guard charged in the torture of inmates at Abu Ghraib pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges and was sentenced to prison time. Specialist Roman Krol, a Russian-born US citizen serving as an interrogator for the US Army, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and maltreating detainees before a military court martial. Krol was sentenced to 10 [...]

Iraqi interim President Ghazi al-Yawer has said that tens of thousands of would-be voters were unable to vote in the Iraqi elections because several polling places, including those in Baghdad, Basra and Najaf ran out of ballots. Abdul-Hussein al-Hendawi, head of the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, said that the "The elections took place under [...]

Bosnian officials have asked the US government to hand over six men detained at Guantanamo Bay after families of the men staged a protest in Sarajevo . The six, all Algerians, were arrested in October 2001 on suspicion of plotting an attack on the US embassy in Sarajevo and were turned over to the US [...]

Here's a run-down of law-related events, expected developments and live webcasts on JURIST's docket for Wednesday, Feb. 2. President Bush will deliver his 2005 State of the Union address tonight at 9 PM ET, followed by a response by Democratic leaders Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Harry Reid. AP has a preview of the speech. [...]

National and State Trends in Fraud & Identity Theft: January — December 2004, Federal Trade Commission , February 1, 2005 . Excerpt: Between January and December 2004, Consumer Sentinel, the complaint database developed and maintained by the FTC, received over 635,000 consumer fraud and identity theft complaints. Consumers reported losses from fraud of more than [...]

Videotapes show Guantanamo Bay military prison riot squads subduing some detainees by punching them, tying one to a gurney and forcing them to strip from the waist down, according to a report by investigators from the US Southern Command obtained by AP. Investigators found no signs of systemic abuse at Guantanamo, but concluded that the [...]

In Tuesday's environmental law news, the US House Committee on Resources has announced that it is expecting to vote on February 9 on a broad energy bill that would allow oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) , speed up approval of drilling permits in areas already open to energy exploration, cut federal [...]