Legislation banning the use of Islamic burqas has been a point of contention recently in many countries. Last week, Dutch politician Geert Wilders [personal website, in Dutch] said that the Netherlands will ban the burqa [JURIST report] as part of the government's plan to form a minority coalition. In August, Austria's conservative Freedom Party [official website, in German] called for a special vote [JURIST report] on whether to ban face veils and the construction of minarets, two of the most visible symbols of the Islamic faith. In July, Spain's lower house of parliament rejected a proposal [JURIST report] to ban the burqa and other full face veils by a vote of 183 to 162 with 2 abstaining. Also in July, UK Immigration Minister Damian Green [official profile] indicated in an interview that Britain's coalition government would not seek or support a British law banning the burqa or other face coverings in public. Green stated that banning the burqa would not be consistent with British society, where mutual respect for differences among cultures is important.

This administration has focused on enforcing our immigration laws in a smart, effective manner that prioritizes public safety and national security and holds employers accountable who knowingly and repeatedly break the law. Our approach has yielded historic results, removing more convicted criminal aliens than ever before and issuing more financial sanctions on employers who knowingly and repeatedly violate immigration laws than during the entire previous administration.

Mounting emphasis on enforcement of existing immigration laws under the Obama administration has seen a sharp rise in deportations [JURIST report] by the ICE, with government resources funding deportations of convicted criminals and raids on corporations suspected of employing illegal immigrants. In July, a Syracuse University study indicated that backlogs at US immigration courts are up by more than 30 percent [JURIST report] in the previous 18 months. As of January 2009, there were an estimated 10.8 million illegal immigrants in the US, one million less than in 2007, according to the DHS. In that same period, deportations have more than doubled. Federal authorities have indicated that the workload would continue to grow since the implementation of Arizona's controversial new immigration law [SB 1070 materials; JURIST news archive], which criminalizes illegal immigration and requires police officers to question an individual's immigration status if the officer has a "reasonable suspicion" to believe an individual is in the country illegally.

Punitive damages are warranted as to this claim because each Defendant's conduct was motivated by evil motive or intent, involved reckless or callous indifference to the federally protected rights of Plaintiffs, intentionally violated federal law, or involved ill will, a desire to injure, and malice. Defendants' conduct is of the sort that calls for deterrence and punishment over and above that provided by compensatory awards.

The constitutional rights of prisoners are somewhat limited. Last year, the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled [opinion text] that a Massachusetts regulation prohibiting prisoners from receiving sexually explicit mail is constitutional [JURIST report]. The petitioners challenged the portions a statute that regulates the receipt of sexually explicit pictures in the mail and the display of sexually explicit or suggestive images, as violating the First Amendment freedom of speech provision. In 2007, the US federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) said that it will reshelve all religious material taken from prison chapel libraries originally determined to fall outside the approved list of material [JURIST report]. The BOP made the decision to temporarily end the Standardized Chapel Library Project in light of growing criticism from a wide spectrum of religious and secular leaders. The BOP says it produced the list of limited material based on a 2004 report by the US Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, which provided recommendations for curbing violence and derogation related to Muslim extremism in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Several other Guantanamo detainees have also filed lawsuits alleging torture. In July, the UK High court allowed [JURIST report] a lawsuit filed by former Guantanamo Bay detainees alleging that the UK government was complicit in their torture to proceed. In April, former Guantanamo Bay detainee Adel Hassan Hamad [advocacy website] filed a lawsuit [JURIST report] in the US District Court for the Western District of Washington [official website] against the US government and more than a dozen government officials, claiming he was tortured.

This text reflects tremendous progress in the fight against counterfeiting and piracy - a global crime wave that robs workers in the United States and around the world of good-paying jobs and exposes consumers to dangerous products. The leadership shown by our ACTA partners ... should send a strong message to pirates and counterfeiters that they have no place in the channels of legitimate trade.

In May, Canada and Mexico, both parties to the agreement, were named two of the worst countries [JURIST report] for protecting copyrighted information by the Congressional International Anti-Piracy Caucus [official website]. The USTR also named Canada as one of the countries on its Priority Watch List [JURIST report] for not adequately protecting intellectual property rights. US-based company eBay [corporate website] has recently come under international fire for its trading practices and has been accused of trafficking counterfeit products. In February, a French district court ordered the company [JURIST report] to pay LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton [corporate website] USD $275,000 in damages for paying search engines to direct customers to counterfeit Louis Vuitton products. Last month, a French appeals court upheld a 2008 decision [JURIST reports] against the company for its role in selling counterfeit goods, but reduced the amount of damages. In April, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit [official website] ruled that the online auction house is not required to actively monitor its website [JURIST report] for the sale of counterfeit goods.

Companies have been charged with criminal negligence in the context of other chemical spills in the past, the most notable of which are in relation to the 1984 Bhopal chemical spill disaster [BBC backgrounder]. In August, the Indian Supreme Court announced that it will reconsider [JURIST report] a 1996 ruling allowing former employees of US chemical producer Union Carbide accused in relation to the 1984 chemical spill to be charged with negligence instead of culpable homicide. Seven men were convicted in June [JURIST report] on charges of "death by negligence" and sentenced to two years in prison and ordered to pay USD $2,100. The convictions were the first related to the Bhopal disaster in which nearly 3,800 people were killed when toxic gas was accidentally released in the middle of the night by a chemical plant owned by a Union Carbide subsidiary company. Upwards of 15,000 others later died from exposure to the gas, and 50,000 were left permanently disabled.