JURIST Special Guest Columnist Jon Stanhope, Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and recently the sole dissenter among Australian state and territorial leaders against strict new anti-terrorism legislation proposed by Australian Prime Minister John Howard, says the anti-terror bill threatens to erode fundamental rights and liberties and even undermines what it means for [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Linda Berger of Thomas Jefferson School of Law, a media law specialist and a former reporter for the Associated Press, says that the indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is the latest in a series of setbacks for those who support a federal shield law for journalists… The news is bad these [...]

Charge Sheets, US Department of Defense, updated November 4, 2005 . Read the full text of the charge sheets here. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

The Pentagon Monday charged five more Guantanamo Bay detainees – two Saudis, an Algerian, an Ethiopian and a Canadian – with war crimes, bringing to nine the number of detainees charged out of some 500 held at the Cuba naval station. The announcement from the US Defense Department came on the heels of word from [...]

British Home Secretary Charles Clarke announced late Monday after consultations with government Labour Party MPs that the government will in fact not back down on a provision of the proposed Terrorism Bill that would allow terror suspects to be detained for up to 90 days without being charged with a crime, but will instead include [...]

The US Supreme Court on Monday heard oral arguments in Dolan v. US Postal Service , where it will decide whether the US Third Circuit Court of Appeals construed a provision of the Federal Tort Claims Act(FTCA) too narrowly in dismissing a personal injury claim against the Post Office. Barbara Dolan was injured when she [...]

Australian police arrested 15 terror suspects early Tuesday local time in what Victoria state police chief Christine Nixon characterized as "the largest operation of counterterrorism that's ever been conducted in this country." Some 400 officers were involved. The 15 suspects, including Abu Bakr, a prominent radical Islamic cleric from Melbourne who has praised Osama bin [...]

The president of the International Criminal Court (ICC) said Monday that ICC rules prevent the court from asserting any jurisdiction over claims against Saddam Hussein . Judge Philippe Kirsch , a Canadian, noted that the new world criminal tribunal at The Hague is only authorized to hear claims arising from incidents occuring after July 1st, [...]

As rioting continues to spread in France , Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin on Monday announced the implementation of curfews and the deployment of 9,500 police officers and gendarmes in an effort to stop the escalating violence. Under state-of-emergency law, Villepin will impose the measures in as many as 300 localities. Commentators and some European [...]

The US military announced Monday that five members of the 75th Ranger Regiment have been charged with physically assaulting prisoners in Iraq in violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice . The five elite soldiers, whose names were not released, were charged in connection with an incident in September 2005 "in which three detainees [...]