The US Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday voted 11-8 in support of a measure that would return habeas corpus rights to terror suspects imprisoned at the Guantanamo Bay military prison. The Habeas Corpus Restoration Act of 2007 , sponsored by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), would allow Guantanamo detainees to challenge their [...]

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and new French President Nicolas Sarkozy agreed at the G8 summit in Germany Thursday that the controversial European constitution should be reconstituted into a "simplified treaty" whose ratification would not require the support of the voters of individual countries. Voters in France and the Netherlands notoriously rejected the original draft [...]

Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Luis Moreno-Ocampo Thursday renewed his call for the arrests of two top suspects accused of committing war crimes in the Darfur region of Sudan . Moreno-Ocampo briefed UN Security Council (UNSC) delegates one week prior to their joint trip with African Union (AU) representatives to several African [...]

Lawyers for former US vice-presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby asked a federal judge Thursday to delay Libby's prison sentence because they felt they have a good chance of winning an appeal of his conviction. Libby was found guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice in March, and sentenced to 2 1/2- years in prison [...]

UK Home Secretary John Reid proposed a number of changes to UK anti-terror laws in a statement to the House of Commons Thursday, calling for longer pre-charge detention of terror suspects, "enhanced" sentences, allowing electronic intercepts as evidence, and institution of "stop and question" powers for police. No formal legislation has been introduced as yet, [...]

Chile's chief prosecutor Thursday urged that former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori be extradited to Peru to face charges of corruption and human rights abuses, some arising from the 1992 Cantuta University massacre in which nine students and a university professor were "disappeared" by the Peruvian military. The prosecutor released her recommendation before a Chilean court [...]

Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2007, passed by the US House of Representatives, June 7, 2007 . Read the full text of the bill . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

The US House of Representatives Thursday passed the Stem Cell Enhancement Act of 2007 247-176 , sending it to a recalcitrant President George W. Bush for signature barely two months after its Senate passage . If signed into law, the bill would amend the Public Health Service Act to allow for additional embryonic stem cell [...]

Off the Record: U.S. Responsibility for Enforced Disappearances in the "War on Terror," Amnesty International, Cageprisoners, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at the New York University School of Law, Human Rights Watch, and Reprieve, June 7, 2007 . Read the full text of the report . Reported [...]

The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany Wednesday ruled that a February 2005 referendum approving the construction of a bridge across the Dresden Elbe Valley , a UNESCO World Heritage Site , takes precedence over the objections of the city council because it was a direct expression of residents' democratic choice. In July of last year, [...]