US Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) said Sunday that the Bush administration is making a "terrible mistake" by opposing a proposed ban on torture and other inhuman treatment of prisoners in US custody. The amendment, proposed by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) , was approved by a 90-9 vote in the Senate last month and added to [...]

Several leading US Senators expressed concern Sunday over the FBI's use of a USA Patriot Act provision that enables the Federal Bureau of Investigation to access private phone and financial records. The Sunday follow a report in the Washington Post that the FBI is issuing over 30,000 national security letters yearly under the Patriot Act, [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist David DeWolf says that the Kitzmiller intelligent design case may settle whether the Pennsylvania school district that put "intelligent design" into its curriculum was acting under impermissible religious animus, but it may not settle whether teaching the origins controversy is actually unconstitutional… On Friday, November 4, the trial of Kitzmiller v. Dover [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Richard Edwards, Principal Lecturer in Law at the University of the West of England in Bristol, UK, says that the new Terrorism Bill presented to Parliament by the Blair government in the wake of the London bombings threatens the rule of law but promises little more security… The United Kingdom has sadly [...]

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has reportedly decided to compromise on a provision of the government's proposed anti-terror bill that allows police to detain a suspect for up to 90 days without charge, according to British media sources Sunday. Blair narrowly avoided an amendment to the draft bill last week that would have added the [...]

New Jersey Superior Court Judge Linda R. Feinberg has ordered the state to compile and distribute by Monday a list of all adult deaths of New Jersey residents since 1985 because 13,000 people who have died are still listed on voter registration lists , including nearly 5,000 who reportedly voted last year. Joseph Komosinki, the [...]

Martinez v. Kulongoski, Marion County, Oregon; Circuit Judge Joseph C. Guimond, November 4, 2005 . Read the full text of the opinion here . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Three Bahrainis and a Saudi national were released Saturday from detention at the US prison at Guantanamo Bay . None of the released detainees was ever charged with a crime under US law. According to a Bahraini lawmaker, the three Bahraini nationals were detained by Pakistani officials four years ago in Afghanistan and sold to [...]

More than 250 people were arrested Friday night in France as rioting spread from the poor suburbs of Paris into the cities of Strasbourg and Rennes. The riots, which began late last week, originated in Parisian ghettos, where jobless rates for males under 25 years old are approaching 25%; for Muslim residents under 25 years [...]

Vice President Dick Cheney urged Republican senators during a closed meeting earlier this week to exempt CIA agents from the Senate anti-torture McCain amendment attached to the 2006 defense spending bill. The amendment, approved 90-9 in the Senate last month, was unanimously reaffirmed by voice-vote on Friday. According to an anonymous senator, Cheney, who is [...]