The Australian Senate on Thursday narrowly voted down a motion to disallow a regulation approved by Australia Governor-General Michael Jeffrey allowing the federal government to effectively veto the Civil Unions Bill 2006 , recently passed by the legislature in the of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) federal district. The ACT bill would have placed civil [...]

Australian Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock , responding Friday to a independent review of new security laws, defended the government's power to define which groups are terrorist organizations subject to criminal penalties. The Security Legislation Review Committee , a public and independent body charged with reviewing the Security Acts dealing with terrorism, released a 262-page report Thursday [...]

Pusho Ibrahim Ali Daza Yei, Iraq's deputy justice minister, has said that Shiite militias control Iraq's prison system and that Iraq "cannot control the prisons." Yei said that Shiite militiamen free other militia members that have been convicted of major crimes, while executing Sunni inmates. In a letter to US Army Maj. Gen. John Gardner, [...]

Defense lawyers for the US Marines accused of killing 24 unarmed civilians in Haditha last November plan to scrutinize the authenticity of the videotape described in the TIME magazine report that first prompted an investigation into the deaths, should charges be filed against the Marines. Attorneys will also question the credibility of Hammurabi Human Rights, [...]

The US military on Friday said that the Army's Criminal Investigation Command will conduct an investigation into the deaths of three detainees in US custody in the Salahaddin province of Iraq, located north of Baghdad. The investigation into deaths, which occurred on or around May 9, results from reported suspicions from soldiers. The investigation comes [...]

Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act of 2005, signed into law by President George W. Bush June 15, 2006 . Read the full text of the Act . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

A New Hampshire judge on Thursday dismissed 5 of 8 counts in a lawsuit brought by Democrats against Republicans after the jamming of Democratic phone lines in the 2002 Senate race between Sen. John Sununu (R-NH) and Democratic challenger Jeanne Shaheen. Sununu won the race by less than five percentage points. Republicans applauded the ruling [...]

The Kentucky Supreme Court ruled Thursday that, despite a 2005 US Supreme Court ruling barring the death penalty for juveniles, the mental age of a death row inmate could not be invoked to stop the state from carrying out his execution. Though the Kentucky court acknowledged the top court's decision, it said that that plainly [...]

Hudson v. Mitchell, Supreme Court of the United States, June 15, 2006 . Read the Court's majority opinion per Justice Scalia along with a concurrence from Justice Kennedy and a dissent from Justice Breyer, who was joined by Justices Stevens, Souter and Ginsburg. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

One week after the US House of Representatives voted 379-35 to pass the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act , President Bush signed into law the legislation that will increase by tenfold the maximum fine for indecency, from $32,500 to $325,000 per station for each violation. The Senate passed the bill in May. The effort to increase [...]