Here as elsewhere, violence should not be used against peaceful demonstrators and against journalists. It must stop. Those responsible must be brought to justice. Above all we have insisted on respect for the rights of peaceful protest and assembly, freedom of the press and access to information. There should be no violence from any quarter. I urge all parties to exercise restraint. The situation calls for bold reforms, not repression.

Protests have swept across the Middle East and North Africa since protesters in Tunisia ousted President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali [JURIST report] last month. On Monday, Algerian Foreign Minister Mourad Medelci said the government will end the 19-year-old state of emergency laws [JURIST report] amidst growing protests in Algeria. Earlier this month, President Hosni Mubarak [Al Jazeera profile] announced his resignation [JURIST report] amid unrelenting protests across Egypt. Also earlier this month, Iranian opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi [JURIST news archive] was placed under house arrest [JURIST report] in relation to calls by Karroubi and fellow opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi [JURIST news archive] for rallies in support of the recent political reform movements in Tunisia and Egypt.

In June, a Turkish criminal court began the trial [JURIST report] of 33 retired and active naval officers accused of attempting to overthrow the government and establish military rule as part of the Ergenekon plot. The Turkish government indicted the 33 defendants [JURIST report] in March on charges of attempting to overthrow the government and establish military rule. Also in March, Turkish police detained 20 people in connection with the plot, and Turkish prosecutors charged [JURIST reports] an army general and a state prosecutor with belonging to Ergenekon and plotting to overthrow the AKP. The Ergenekon investigation has been criticized as an attempt by the AKP to silence the opposition and impose Islamic principles [JURIST report] on secular Turkey. Trials against the Ergenekon group started [JURIST report] two years ago and nearly 200 people have been charged in connection with it.

According to the original complaint [text, PDF], the plot was intended to "cause greater destruction than in the Sept. 11 attacks," according to one of the suspects. The plot could have destroyed parts of New York's borough of Queens [official website], where an underground fuel pipeline serving the airport runs. Defreitas, designer of the plot, sought to use his experience as a cargo handler for the airport to attack JFK's fuel tanks and pipelines. He recruited Kadir, Nur and Ibrahim during several trips he made to Guyana and Trinidad. Authorities tracked the plot for more than a year before making the arrests. Defreitas had said he formed the plot more than a decade ago, saying he chose the airport because its destruction would put "the whole country in mourning."

Xue originally appealed his conviction in July, arguing that the information he is accused of taking was widely available for sale on the Internet for seceral years. Xue had been convicted earlier that month [JURIST report]. Xue has asserted that he has been tortured while in custody, a claim that comports with a recent report by Human Rights Watch, which has accused China of failing to meet goals [JURIST report] the country had set for advancing human rights. In September, the Chinese government claimed to have increased human rights [JURIST report] by heightening Internet freedoms and improving civil and political rights.

Russia faces ongoing criticism from the international community regarding its human rights record. In July, Medvedev signed into law [JURIST report] a bill that granted controversial new powers to the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), the Russian Federation's successor to the former USSR's KGB [GlobalSecurity backgrounders]. The bill, which the Russian parliament approved [JURIST report] earlier that month, gives the FSB authority to question citizens about actions that may create the conditions for a crime and issue warnings [DW report] not to engage in unapproved acts. However, Russian courts have recently taken action against extremist groups in the country. A Russian court in July made public a ruling banning access to five websites [JURIST report], including the video-sharing network Youtube [website], for what it called extremist elements. Also in July, a Russian court sentenced 14 neo-Nazis [JURIST news archive], including a group leader and several teenagers, to jail terms for committing hate crimes against ethnic minorities [JURIST report].

The Court gave no indication, however, that it intended or anticipated the specific potential disruptions of ongoing programs and operations (discussed above) and the questions that would arise about which parties are bound by the Court's order while the appellate courts resolve constitutional challenges to the Affordable Care Act. And despite its clear recognition of the complexity of the [law] and the difficulty in determining how the reasoning of its declaratory judgment would affect existing programs, this Court expressly declined to grant "injunctive relief enjoining implementation of the Act."

Vinson granted [JURIST report] the states' motion for summary judgment in January, finding that the minimum coverage mandate exceeded Congress' authority under the commerce clause. The health care reform law is the subject of numerous legal challenges and inconsistent rulings across the country. A Virginia appeals court is scheduled to hear challenges to two conflicting lower-court rulings in May—one upholding the legislation and the other invalidating part of it. In December, a judge for the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that the individual mandate provision is unconstitutional [JURIST report] but left the remainder of the law intact. Earlier that month, a judge for the US District Court for the Western District of Virginia dismissed [JURIST report] a lawsuit challenging a provision of the health care reform law. In October, a federal judge in Michigan ruled [JURIST report] that the law is constitutional under the Commerce Clause

The Obama administration continues its push to close the Guantanamo Bay facility, despite running into several hurdles in closing the prison, including the suspension of detainee transfers to Yemen and a new law barring the transfer of Guantanamo detainees [JURIST reports] to the US for trial. Earlier this month, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) [advocacy website] used the death of a Guantanamo detainee to highlight what it claims are problems with the detention system [JURIST report] currently used by the US for dealing with suspected terrorists. In January, Human Rights Watch criticized Obama [JURIST report] for failing to shut down the facility as he promised during the 2008 presidential campaign. In an effort to reduce the population at the facility, the US has been transferring detainees to other countries. There are currently 178 detainees awaiting transfer from Guantanamo.

A trial on the merits would be an international spectacle with Padilla, a convicted terrorist, summoning America's present and former leaders to a federal courthouse to answer his charges. This massive litigation would have been authorized not by a Congressionally established statutory cause of action, but by a court implying an action from the face of the American Constitution.

A federal judge in San Francisco reached the opposite conclusion in June 2009 when he allowed a lawsuit filed [JURIST reports] by Padilla to move forward against University of California Berkeley law professor John Yoo [academic profile; JURIST news archive], the author of controversial US government memos arguing that detained enemy combatants could be denied Geneva Conventions protections against torture. The suit alleges that Yoo's memos, written while he was a senior lawyer in the US Justice Department, helped set the Bush administration's policy that terrorism detainees are not protected by the Geneva Conventions. Padilla was convicted and sentenced to 17 years in prison [JURIST report], along with Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifadh Wael Jayyousi, on charges of conspiracy to commit illegal violent acts outside the US, conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and providing material support to terrorists. Padilla, a US citizen, was arrested in 2002 at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and subsequently detained as an "enemy combatant" [JURIST news archive].

Stanford donated more than $2.3 million to lawmakers' campaigns and spent more than $5 million in lobbying efforts while allegedly carrying out the fraud. He has denied the charges [JURIST report] against him and was originally set to be released on $500,000 bail until prosecutors successfully appealed the decision. Through three of his investment companies, Stanford allegedly violated the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and the Investment Company Act of 1940 [texts]. In January, a federal judge declared Stanford incompetent to stand trial [JURIST report] in connection with a $7 billion fraud scheme. Judge David Hittner of the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas, who postponed the trial [JURIST report] earlier in the month, ordered Stanford to enter detoxification for an addiction to anti-anxiety and anti-depression medications prescribed to him by prison physicians that has rendered him unable to meaningfully contribute to his defense. A new trial date has yet to be scheduled, though Hittner advised lawyers for both sides to prepare themselves to proceed.

It is regrettable that this extension means living with a bad law for three more months, but the silver lining is an opportunity for Congress to focus fully on making necessary reforms to the Patriot Act. The intrusive and extensive power that this law grants our government has very real and serious effects on Americans' lives, and has been in place for far too long. Congress should use the next three months for the kind of vigorous debate Americans' privacy deserves.

The US Senate [official website] passed [JURIST report] the bill on Tuesday by an 86-12 vote. Earlier in the week, a simple majority of the House approved a similar bill that would have extended the three provisions until December after it had failed [JURIST reports] the prior week under a special rule that required a two-thirds majority. Earlier this month, the Obama administration released a statement of administration policy [text, PDF] vying for a three-year renewal of the provisions, but expressed support for the bill passed Monday. The provisions were extended in February 2010 after the Obama administration asked the Senate Judiciary Committee to extend [JURIST reports] the Patriot Act.