[T]he laws that have been in place have not been adequate for a crisis of this magnitude. The Oil Pollution Act was passed at a time when people didn't envision drilling four miles under the sea for oil. And so it's going to be important that, based on facts, based on experts, [and] based on a thorough examination of what went wrong ... we update the laws to make sure that the people in the Gulf, the fishermen, the hotel owners, families who are dependent for their livelihoods in the Gulf, that they are all made whole and that we are in a much better position to respond to any such crisis in the future.

Last week, Holder announced that the Department of Justice [official website] would be reviewing whether any criminal or civil laws were violated by BP [JURIST report]. Holder cited several statutes being examined by government lawyers including the Clean Water Act [materials] and the Oil Pollution Act. The Clean Water Act includes both civil and criminal penalties, and the Oil Pollution Act can be used to hold parties liable for cleanup costs. Obama held a press conference in May to announce new regulations to mitigate future oil spills [JURIST report] and the current plan of action for resolving the crisis created by the ongoing spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The government suspended several offshore drilling activities including exploration of platform locations in Alaska, pending lease sales in the Gulf and Virginia, and the drilling of 33 deepwater exploratory wells in the Gulf. The government also suspended the issuance of new permits to drill deepwater wells for six months. Obama stated that increased government regulation in the oil industry was necessary to alter the "cozy and sometimes corrupt" relationship it has built with federal regulators.

This settlement gives the plaintiffs immediate, fair and reasonable compensation, certainty and closure after years of protracted and costly litigation that will continue without this agreement. This settlement establishes objective criteria, based upon accepted medical standards, to assess the type and severity of each illness alleged in order to achieve a fair value for each claim.

Hellerstein rejected a proposed settlement in March [JURIST report], citing an unfairness of claim amounts and the over-complicated process to determine compensation. Hellerstein also said that attorney's fees should be limited and paid by the WTC Captive Insurance Company, rather than by the claimants. WTC Captive is a nonprofit company created by Public Law 108-7 [text, PDF] with $1 billion in FEMA [official website] funding to compensate injured workers involved in the Ground Zero rescue and cleanup efforts. In 2007, the City of New York agreed to enter into settlement negotiations over a federal class action lawsuit filed on behalf of more than 9,000 emergency and cleanup workers who may have inhaled toxic dust at WTC site, which Hellerstein allowed [JURIST reports] to proceed. The plaintiffs claim that they were not properly equipped or trained to perform their tasks.

The Supreme Court's ruling stems two lower court cases in Ontario and Alberta in 2006. In Alberta, defendant Michael White was charged with the murder of his wife. White was released on bail and a publication ban was ordered by the court. The Alberta appeals court held that the ban "merely defers publication" and that the values of protecting fair access to bail and the right to a fair trial were benefits that outweighed the effects of the limitation on media organizations. In Ontario, 12 adults and five adolescents were charged with various terrorism-related offenses. Due the media attention the case attracted, some of the defendants applied for a publication ban. The appeals court held that while the ban was rationally connected to government's objective, it was too broad. The court remedied this issue by excluding from the ban any cases in which the charges would not be tried by a jury.

The approach taken toward Holocaust reparations has varied across countries. Last June, a German court ruled that Holocaust survivors are entitled to collect pension benefits [JURIST report] as a result of the work they performed in concentration camps. In 2008, a US appeals court ordered the return of a painting [JURIST report] confiscated from a Jewish art gallery owner in Germany immediately prior to the Holocaust. Earlier that year, the Belgian government and Belgian banks agreed to pay nearly $170 million in reparations [JURIST report] to compensate the Holocaust survivors for the money and goods they lost during World War II. A Belgian government commission found in 2007 that the Belgian government had been complicit [JURIST report] in Nazi persecution of the Jewish population during the Holocaust and the country's courts failed to hold Belgian authorities accountable for persecuting and deporting Jews after World War II. In 2005, Austria began its compensation process [JURIST report] for victims robbed of businesses, property, bank accounts and insurance policies under the Nazi regime.

The City has met its burden of showing that the law enforcement privilege applies to the [documents] because the[y], even as redacted by the District Court, contain detailed information about the NYPD's undercover "law enforcement techniques and procedures." Plaintiffs do not have a "compelling need" for the [documents] because the Reports do not contradict, undermine, or otherwise cast doubt upon the End User Reports - the documents upon which the City will rely in defending its arrest and fingerprinting procedures. Because plaintiffs do not have a "compelling need," they have not overcome the "strong presumption" against lifting the law enforcement privilege. The City's right to a writ of mandamus is "clear and indisputable" because the District Court committed three errors that amounted to a "clear abuse of discretion," if not a "judicial usurpation of power."

In October 2004, the New York Civil Liberties Union [advocacy website] filed the lawsuit [NYCLU backgrounder; JURIST report] that will now go to trial, claiming that hundreds were illegally arrested and detained during protests at the Republican National Convention in August of that year. In April 2005, New York City agreed to pay $150 [JURIST report] each plus legal fees totaling about $215,000 to 108 of the protesters. Lawyers from the Center for Constitutional Rights and the New York chapter of the National Lawyers Guild [advocacy websites] filed a class action suit against New York city officials in November 2004 saying the officials violated the constitutional rights of protesters by orchestrating mass arrests and detentions during the Republican National Convention. More than 1,800 people were arrested during the four-day convention held in New York City. The suits allege that in addition to wrongly arresting many people, New York police held those arrested longer than allowed and fingerprinted many who were only accused of minor crimes. In October 2004, the Manhattan district attorney dismissed charges against 227 protesters [ACLU press release] accused of blocking traffic near the World Trade Center site.

OHRP has a legal responsibility to investigate these disturbing new allegations about the CIA and possible illegal human experimentation on detainees, despite the refusal by Langely and the White House to do so. OHRP has a reputation for enforcing strict adherence to human research protections, which it must bring to bear against any CIA malfeasance that it uncovers.

Monday's report is the latest incident in a long string of medical condemnations of Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] and the medical professionals working in it. Last April, the International Committee of the Red Cross [official website] released a report [text, PDF] alleging that medical professionals violated codes of medical ethics [JURIST report] by participating in and assisting in ill-treatment of Guantanamo Bay detainees. In September 2007, doctors from 16 countries wrote a letter [JURIST report] condemning the US military for its treatment of detainees, particularly the policy of force-feeding to counteract hunger strikes. A month earlier, a commentary [text] published in the Journal of the American Medical Association [journal website] asserted that force-feeding was a violation of medical ethics [JURIST report].

The ICTY trial of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic [case materials; JURIST news archive] is still ongoing. Karadzic is the alleged mastermind behind the violence against Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica. His trial resumed in April after the ICTY dismissed [JURIST report] Kardzic's latest motion to delay court proceedings, in which he argued that there had been a violation of his right to a fair hearing because the court had rejected previous evidentiary challenges. Karadzic's alleged co-conspirator, former Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic [case materials; JURIST news archive] is still at large. Mladic's family is seeking to have the former military leader declared officially dead [JURIST report] by the Serbian government in order to collect his state pension and sell his property. Under Serbian law, an individual can be officially declared dead when he is over the age of 70 and no reliable information on his whereabouts has been discovered for five years. Mladic is 68, but his family is convinced he is no longer alive.

The Colombian authorities tried to bury the truth about the Palace of Justice despite overwhelming evidence that members of the security forces orchestrated the enforced disappearance, torture and execution of some of those inside. ... With this groundbreaking ruling the victims' families, who for almost a quarter of a century have campaigned for justice, have begun to break the silence that has for so long protected those responsible.

The 1985 conflict began when left-wing rebels took judges hostage in the Palace of Justice and planned to stage a political trial of then-president Belisario Betancur. The army responded by raiding the building resulting in a 27-hour assault, which left the palace burned to the ground. More than 20,000 people have disappeared over the past 30 years of internal conflict in Colombia. In October, Colombian prosecutor Luis Gonzalez said that at least 27,384 civilians disappeared between 1988 and 2002 [JURIST report], with nearly 75 percent of them allegedly kidnapped by illegal right-wing militias. The government's Justice and Peace Office [official website, in Spanish] compiled the list after a three-year investigation of forced disappearances that included testimonies of the relatives of the missing persons. Under the 2005 Justice and Peace law [AI backgrounder, JURIST report], more than 25,000 militants have demobilized, confessed to murders, and led officials to the graves of 2,300 Colombians. The controversial law has been criticized [JURIST report] for giving lesser punishments to paramilitary leaders who voluntarily disarm. Last year, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe [official profile, in Spanish] urged [JURIST report] Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) [CFR backgrounder] guerrillas to abandon arms and release political hostages, promising those who respond to the call a reward and freedom.

[Voters] feel very strongly that nothing gets done by this partisan bickering. And even though throughout the country you see some states going further to the right and some states go further to the left but Californian voters were fighting for the middle... And I have been saying this since I [came] into office, that we must reform the system in order to make our political leaders and politicians servants to the people and not servants to the parties, because no one can get stuck in their ideologies. Those are fundamental changes, those are huge changes that will change everything in the future. It will not solve all the problems but it will change a lot.

Proposition 14 was based largely on the system used in Washington state, which was implemented there in 2004 after the passage of Initiative 872 [text, PDF]. In 2008, the US Supreme Court [official website; JURIST news archive] upheld [JURIST report] Washington's primary election system as constitutional against a First Amendment [Cornell LII backgrounder] challenge, overturning a contrary decision [opinion, PDF] by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit [official website]. Louisiana has a similar system, but, under that system, a candidate who garners over 50 percent of the vote in the primary will forgo the general election. The passage of Proposition 14 comes as part of a larger effort by Schwarzenegger to reform the politics of the state before he leaves office in early 2011. In 2008, Proposition 11 [LAT backgrounder] was approved by 50.9 percent [results, PDF] of voters, removing the authority to redraw legislative districts from the state legislature and giving it to an independent agency comprised of an even number of Democrats and Republicans.

With our line-item veto proposal, any president would now have an effective way to prevent taxpayer dollars being wasted on special interest projects. Not only would the line-item veto help go after billions of dollars worth of unnecessary spending secretly tucked into larger bills, it would also shine a light on the earmark process and deter lawmakers from doing earmarks in the first place.

Congress originally granted presidents line-item veto power with the Line-Item Veto Act of 1996 [text PDF]. The US Supreme Court [official website; JURIST news archive], however, ruled in 1998 that the act was unconstitutional in Clinton v. City of New York [opinion text]. The Bush Administration submitted line-item veto legislation [text; JURIST report] to Congress in 2006 for further consideration. The legislation was advanced by the House committee and eventually passed by the full House of Representatives, but failed to gain Senate approval [JURIST reports].

The Millennium Development Goals are largely silent on human rights, and the targets they set are in some cases less than what states are already obligated to do under international law. For example, the MDGs contain no explicit requirement that states identify and address exclusion and discrimination. The targets and indicators for many of the goals do not acknowledge the variety of human rights factors that drive and deepen poverty. Integrating international human rights standards into MDG efforts could lead to more meaningful progress on the MDGs in the next five years.

The 192 nations that comprise the UN membership adopted the UN Millennium Declaration [text, PDF] in 2000, creating eight goals to be met by 2015. The goals concentrate on reducing poverty, increasing access to healthcare and education, and improving the environment. In May, AI released its 2010 Annual Report [JURIST report], highlighting a "global justice gap" caused by influential governments avoiding accountability for human rights abuses. AI was critical of the actions of the Group of 20 (G20) nations, which it described as having a "particular responsibility to set an example," and called on its members to join the International Criminal Court (ICC) [official websites]. The report stated that world governments had yielded to political pressures and used international organizations and alliances to shield themselves from accountability for violating international human rights standards. The report cited veto use by permanent members of the UN Security Council [official website] to prevent the international community from taking action on rights violations committed by permanent members and their allies. Last year, AI Secretary-General Irene Khan stated that the global economic crisis is exacerbating [JURIST report] the world's human rights failures, urging governments to "invest in human rights as purposefully as they are investing in economic growth." Khan spoke at the release of the 2009 annual report, which says that wealthy nations have overlooked "massive human rights abuses, entrench[ed] poverty and endanger[ed] regional stability," while attempting to assemble economic recovery packages.

Last month, the Sixth Circuit denied an en banc rehearing in another case [opinion, PDF] involving the display of the Ten Commandments in a Grayson County, Kentucky, courthouse. The court found the display to be constitutional, distinguishing it from McCreary because it presented a valid secular purpose from the outset. In a 2005 decision, the Sixth Circuit ruled in favor of a Ten Commandments display in a Mercer County, Kentucky, courthouse. The 2005 Supreme Court decision prompted lawmakers to propose a constitutional amendment [JURIST report] to overturn it. On the same day it issued the McCreary decision, the Supreme Court ruled that a six-foot-tall display of the Ten Commandments [JURIST report] on the grounds of the Texas state capitol was constitutionally acceptable because it had a secular purpose.