The Libya conflict [JURIST backgrounder] has been ongoing since February. Last month, Libyan Prime Minister Al Baghdad Ali Al-Mahmoudi requested that the UN create a "high-level commission" to investigate alleged human rights abuses [JURIST report] by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) [official website]. Though NATO was mandated by the UN to use force in order to stop Muammar from fomenting violence upon Libyan citizens, the campaign has allegedly gone beyond the scope of protecting civilians and recently led to the death of 85 civilians in one night after NATO forces bombed a residential area supposedly housing a rebel command center. In June, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) [official website] decided to extend a mandate to an investigative panel instructing it to continue its investigation of human rights abuses in Libya, after it published a 92-page report [JURIST reports]. The report claims Libyan authorities have committed crimes against humanity such as acts constituting murder, imprisonment and other severe deprivations of physical liberties, torture, forced disappearances and rape "as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population with knowledge of the attack."

[I]ncreasing crime cannot be used to justify continued civil rights violations or the failure to implement meaningful reforms. Constitutional policing and effective law enforcement are inextricably bound. Public safety depends on the trust and cooperation of the community, which in turn depends on constitutional police practices that respect civil rights. Our previous efforts in working with large police departments strongly suggest that by addressing the civil rights concerns we raise in this report, the Commonwealth will not only meet its constitutional duty, but also reduce crime, improve public safety, and increase community confidence.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) [advocacy website] in March urged [JURIST report] the DOJ to take action against the government of Puerto Rico for alleged civil rights violations. In a letter addressed to Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez, the ACLU asked the DOJ to conclude its investigation into rights abuses reported [text, PDF] by the ACLU of Puerto Rico [advocacy website] since 2008 and publish a report of its findings. It also urged the DOJ to intervene to provide remedies to end the alleged police abuses which included: violence against student protesters; the fabrication of drug-related charges against over a 100 individuals in the city of Mayaguez; the violent and inhumane eviction of members of the Villas del Sol squatter community, including the denial of fresh water to the community for eight months; the de-certification of the Puerto Rico Bar Association [official website, in Spanish] and other actions to stifle dissent. Residents of Puerto Rico, an unincorporated US territory, are US citizens and have the same federal First Amendment and due process [Cornell LII backgrounders] rights in relation to the island's government as a mainland US citizen would have against a state government.

In December, the US government pledged to support the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples [JURIST report], a non-binding UN treaty expressing support for the rights of indigenous peoples. The US was the last member to lend its support to the treaty. In August 2010, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon [official website] called on governments to improve the living conditions of indigenous peoples [JURIST report] and support the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

As required by Alabama law, at his resentencing Loggins was mandatorily sentenced to life without parole the same as if it had been the maximum and only sentence prescribed for him and his crime from the beginning. The issue, then, is whether it is unconstitutional to sentence a defendant who committed a murder while he was a juvenile to a mandatory sentence of life without parole. Loggins claims that it is, but he has not cited a single decision of any federal court that even comes close to holding that...Given the absence of any support for Loggins' claims about the mandatory nature of the life without parole sentence imposed on him and given the presence of Supreme Court decisions strongly indicating that his claims have no merit, he has failed to carry his burden of establishing that no fairminded jurist could agree with the Alabama courts' rejection of those claims.

Other states also permit sentencing juveniles to life imprisonment without parole. Last November, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) [advocacy website] filed a lawsuit [JURIST report] in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan [official website] against Michigan government officials, claiming that state's juvenile sentencing laws allowing life imprisonment without parole were unconstitutional. According to the ACLU, the US is the only country to sentence children to life in prison without parole. In May 2010, the US Supreme Court held [JURIST report] in Graham v. Florida [Cornell LII backgrounder] that the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment prohibits the imprisonment of a juvenile for life without the possibility of parole as punishment for the juvenile's commission of a non-homicide offense.

The ACLUFL filed suit [JURIST report] in June challenging Scott's executive order mandating state agencies to enact pre-employment drug screening for all prospective employees and provide for random drug testing of all current agency employees regardless of classification. The governor issued Executive Order 11-58 [text, PDF] in March and directed the drug testing policy to go into effect by May 21, 2011. The challenge was brought on behalf of a public employees union representing 50,000 public workers affected by the order. In the complaint, the ACLUFL argued that the order violates both the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of unreasonable governmental searches and case law stating that drug-testing without suspicion is unreasonable except under certain circumstances, such as when employees are involved in "safety-sensitive" positions. Special counsel for the union also argued that the order unfairly singles out public workers.

The UK announced the public inquiry [JURIST report] in 2008 after the nine other Iraqis alleged torture at the hands of British troops and sued the MOD for damages. Charges were dropped in 2007 against six British soldiers accused of involvement with Mousa's death, but one accused soldier, Corporal David Payne, pleaded guilty [JURIST reports] in 2006 to a charge of inhumane treatment, becoming the first British soldier to admit commission of a war crime in Iraq. The corporal was singled out in Thursday's report as conducting the final violent assault on Mousa before the prisoner died. Although he pleaded guilty to inhumane treatment of the detainees, Payne pleaded not guilty to manslaughter and perverting the course of justice. A UN report released just last month analyzed the current human rights situation in Iraq and confirmed that human rights abuses in the country continue [JURIST report] despite the drawdown of foreign troops, such as in 2010 when Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] reported that Iraqi detainees were being repeatedly tortured [JURIST report] in a secret prison in Baghdad.

We look to our leaders and our institutions, our courts and our Congress, to guide us towards a better way, and it is now up to the American people to demand that our leaders respond to national security challenges with our values, our unity—and yes, our courage—intact. Our country is strong. And it is our fundamental values that are the very foundation of our strength and security.

One practice that the ACLU report criticized was the government's practice of using cell phone location data to track individuals suspected of terroristic or criminal acts The ACLU is currently involved in litigation and investigations pertaining to requests for information filed under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) [text] regarding the Department of Justice's (DOJ) [official website] use of this practice. The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit [official website] on Wednesday ordered [JURIST report] the DOJ to disclose docket information in certain cases, finding that privacy concerns did not outweigh the public interest goals of the FOIA. Last month the group announced that their affiliates were sending approximately 375 requests for information [JURIST report] in 31 states to reveal how law enforcement uses location data tracking on cell phones. Most jurisdictions have never encountered cell phone tracking as a legal question, so police are generally not required to obtain a warrant. The ACLU is demanding a review of information from each targeted department, including: if probable cause warrants are obtained to access cell phone location data, statistics on how frequently law enforcement gathers this data, how much money is being spent on cell phone tracking, and any other policies or procedures used to acquire cell phone location data. The ACLU also supports the Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance Act [materials], introduced to Congress in June, which would require government agencies to obtain a probable cause warrant before seeking location data.