In February Barbier postponed the multi-billion dollar trial [JURIST report] over the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, hours before the trial was set to begin, in order to give BP more time to reach an agreement with plaintiffs. Earlier in February Barbier issued an order that BP will be held liable for a portion of the damages owed by Transocean [JURIST report] as a result of the disaster. Transocean is the company that owned the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that was contracted by BP and subsequently caused the oil spill. BP will be required to indemnify Transocean against damages created by the pollution itself that are awarded throughout the litigation pending against it. BP will not be required to pay an punitive damages or civil fines as a result of these suits. The court did not rule as to whether BP or Transocean would be held strictly liable, negligent or grossly negligent for the equipment failure and subsequent oil spill that created the pollution. The ruling is separate from an August ruling by Barbier permitting punitive damages against BP [JURIST report], but that ruling pertained to claims brought against BP directly.

Google has faced significant inquiry into the data collection practices of its Street View product. The French National Commission of Information Technology and Liberty (CNIL) [official website, in French] fined [JURIST report] Google 100,000 euros (USD $141,300) for violating French data privacy laws by capturing personal data through Google Street View cars. In November 2010 the UK Information Commissioner's Office [official website] found that Google had committed a "significant breach" [JURIST report] of the Data Protection Act [text] and required that Google delete the payload data it collected in the UK and implement employee training on privacy principles, security awareness and the Data Protection Act. Other countries, including Canada, Australia and Spain [JURIST reports], have launched similar investigations into the privacy breach.

We agree with the plaintiffs that the unconstitutionality of torturing a United States citizen was "beyond debate" by 2001. Yoo is entitled to qualified immunity, however, because it was not clearly established in 2001-03 that the treatment to which Padilla says he was subjected amounted to torture. ... In 2001-03, there was general agreement that torture meant the intentional infliction of severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental. The meaning of "severe pain or suffering" however, was less clear in 2001-03.

Yoo was a lawyer with the US Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) [official website] and is now a professor at the University of California Berkeley School of Law [official website]. He could have faced disbarment. In Feburary 2010 the DOJ issued a ruling [JURIST report] saying that Yoo was only guilty of "poor judgment" in writing the interrogation technique memos. In July 2009 Yoo appealed a district court ruling [JURIST reports] that permitted a lawsuit alleging his complicity in torture to proceed. The Spanish justice system continues to seek information in response to a lawsuit [JURIST reports] alleging a legal cover up, by US officials including Yoo, of torture methods.

Executive Order No. 13,526 provides a comprehensive system for classifying national security information, and contains four prerequisites: (1) the information must be classified by an "original classification authority"; (2) the information must be "owned by" or "under the control of" the government; (3) the information must fall within one of the authorized withholding categories under this order; and (4) the original classification authority must determine that the unauthorized disclosure of the information reasonably could be expected to result in damage to the national security; and must be able to identify or describe the damage."

In April the chief US military judge at Guantanamo, Army Col. James Pohl, assigned himself [JURIST report] to preside over the tribunals of five alleged plotters of the 9/11 terror attacks, scheduling a hearing for May 5. Last month the DOD referred charges [JURIST report] to Pohl against the five accused 9/11 plotters. The DOD announced last May that it had sworn charges against the five men [JURIST report] for the 9/11 attacks. Last April US Attorney General Eric Holder [official website] announced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the four others would be tried by a military commission [JURIST report] after the Obama administration abandoned attempts to have the 9/11 suspects tried in civilian courts. Holder had wanted the accused be tried before a federal civilian court but referred the cases to the DOD after Congress imposed a series of restrictions [JURIST reports] barring the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the US.

Threats, intimidation and attacks against judicial personnel are an almost daily occurrence. Lack of personnel, equipment, and infrastructure, and poor professional training make the judiciary in Somalia a virtually paralyzed entity. The inclusion of the justice and corrections sectors in the security sector pillar has to some extent contributed to this state of affairs. Women have little access to redress in cases of rape or domestic violence. Reports on these abuses are usually handled through customary justice processes, which resolve the conflict between families or clans rather than seeking justice for the victim. This may lead to sentencing that forces a rape victim to marry the rapist.

Somalia has been accused of many human rights violations over the past year. In February Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] criticized [JURIST report] Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (FTG) and African Union forces (AMISOM) for failing to stop the unlawful recruitment of children as soldiers, forced marriage and rape. In August HRW accused [JURIST report] parties in the Somalia conflict of involvement in abuses of citizens and urged them to cease all of such activities immediately. In July Amnesty International released a report alleging that children continue to be victims [JURIST report] of the conflict. The 2010 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices [materials] however, noted progress [JURIST report] for human rights. In 2009 UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said [JURIST report] that human rights violations committed during Somalian conflicts may amount to war crimes [press release].