Egypt's ruling army in April approved a law [JURIST report] drafted by the Egyptian Parliament [official website] which banned certain candidates from the presidential elections. The law was passed early in April [JURIST report] and prevented anyone who held a rank of party leader or higher during the regime of former president Hosni Mubarak from running for president for 10 years. The law was not passed in time to block the candidacy of Ahmed Shafik, who very briefly served as Mubarak's prime minister and for a short period following his rule. Earlier that month, the Egyptian Constitutional Court [official website, Arabic] announced [JURIST report] that it could not rule on the constitutionality of the law until after it has taken effect.

Last July, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit dismissed a case brought by Washington state, South Carolina and other local governments challenging the Depart of Energy (DOE) failure to proceed with the Yucca Mountain project [JURIST report]. The plaintiffs, responsible for the temporary storage of nuclear waste, challenged both a decision of the DOE to withdraw its application from the NRC for Yucca Mountain and its apparent abandonment of that project. The nuclear repository was not welcomed by Nevada government officials, who had been mounting challenges against the site since Congress approved government plans to construct the facility in 2002. Government officials fear that the repository, which will be located 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, will negatively effect the city's $28 billion tourism industry. The application for the repository had been pending since 2008 when it was filed by former president George W. Bush. The repository was approved by Congress in 1987 to contain highly toxic waste from nuclear complexes that built atomic bombs during the Cold War.

Nizami and Molla are only the two most recent leaders to be arrested and charged with war crimes for their participation in atrocities committed during the 1971 war. Earlier this month Ghulam Azam, former head of the JI party, was indicted [JURIST report] by the ICTB. The tribunal ordered Azam's arrest [JURIST report] in January. In November the ICTB began its first trial [JURIST report] in the case against Delwar Hossain Sayedee, a former member of Parliament in the National Assembly of Bangladesh [official website, in Bengali] and one of the former leaders of JI. Human Rights Watch [advocacy website] last year sent a letter to the Bangladesh government praising its efforts through the ICTB to prosecute war crimes, but urged the government to ensure that the trials are carried out in accordance with international human rights expectations [JURIST report].

The separation of church and state has been and remains a controversial issue [JURIST op-ed] in American courts. In January the US Supreme Court declined to review [JURIST report] a case concerning whether a North Carolina county board of commissioners violated the Establishment Clause by opening their public meetings with prayers. In July a federal judge ordered a Florida county courthouse to remove the Ten Commandments monument [JURIST report] displayed [JPG] on its front steps on grounds that the monument's "permanent" nature and religious message violated the Establishment Clause. In April 2010 a federal judge in Wisconsin famously ruled that Congressional legislation [text] from 1952 establishing a National Day of Prayer [advocacy website] was unconstitutional [JURIST report]. There, in receiving a grant of summary judgment, the FFRF successfully argued that, by passing the aforementioned statute, the government had improperly endorsed religion in violation of the Establishment Clause.