Three leading Republican senators, John W. Warner (R-VA) , John McCain (R-AZ) , and Lindsey O. Graham (R-SC) , on Wednesday condemned President Bush's statement that he can bypass the newly-passed ban on torture under his commander in chief powers. The statement made by Bush when he signed the 2006 defense spending bill last week, [...]

Lawyers for former Enron chairman Kenneth Lay and ex-CEO Jeffrey Skilling on Wednesday afternoon filed a motion to move the location of the trial, where both defendants face charges of conspiracy and fraud in connection with the fall of the energy company. The trial is currently scheduled to begin on January 30 in Houston, but [...]

The Palestinian Election Commission (CEC) , an independent commission that supervises elections in the Palestinian Authority , resigned Thursday in protest of the government's decision to allow 60,000 security forces to cast votes in the January 25 parliamentary elections in their barracks instead of in their districts. After receiving the resignation letter, however, Prime Minister [...]

US Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) , the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee , told President Bush in a letter Wednesday that the White House violated the National Security Act when it withheld information pertaining to the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program from full congressional oversight committees. Harman said the National Security Act [...]

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on Wednesday appealed to Egyptian authorities in an attempt to prevent the deportation of 654 Sudanese refugees whom Cairo authorities say are in the country illegally. Also Wednesday, US-based rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to stop the deportations , which were announced [...]

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi defended his annual visits to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine Wednesday, and condemned Chinese and South Korean leaders who refused to meet with him because he commemorates Japanese veterans from World War II. Several of those honored by the shrine were executed for committing war crimes, and Koizumi's visits prompted protests by [...]

A federal judge Wednesday rejected the US government's argument that revealing the names of hundreds of Guantanamo Bay detainees violates their privacy, and remanded the case for further consideration on whether to actually release the names. The lawsuit was filed against the US Department of Defense under the Freedom of Information Act by the Associated [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Scott Gerber of Ohio Northern University Pettit College of Law says that the case for higher salaries for federal judges is far less clear than Chief Justice Roberts and others make it out to be… William H. Rehnquist lobbied tirelessly during his two decades aschief justice of the United States for pay [...]

Order in C.T. Hanft v. Jose Padilla, Supreme Court of the United States, January 4, 2005 . Read the full text of the order . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

US Vice President Dick Cheney offered a forceful defense of the NSA warrantless surveillance program in use since the September 11 terrorist attacks in an address to a Heritage Foundation audience in Washington Wednesday. Cheney said the wiretaps do not violate American civil liberties and are tools used to help prevent future terrorist attacks. While [...]