Daniel Hernandez et al. v. Victor L. Robles, Supreme Court of New York, Appellate Division, December 8, 2005 . Excerpt: The role of the courts is "to recognize rights that are supported by the Constitution and history, but the power to create novel rights is reserved for the people through the democratic and legislative processes" [...]

Khaled el-Masri , a German man at the heart of an ACLU lawsuit against the CIA alleging wrongful imprisonment , may have been targeted as a result of information Germany shared with the US, according to a German security official . In the complaint , El-Masri alleged that he was kidnapped in Macedonia and taken [...]

The US Department of Justice announced six arrests on Thursday in connection with a series of ecoterrorism attacks in the Pacific Northwest from 1998 to 2001. Four arsons and the destruction of a transmission tower owned by the Bonneville Power Administration , a government power agency, were the basis for the charges. The Animal Liberation [...]

Reversing a ruling made by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health , Governor Mitt Romney said Thursday that even private hospitals must provide emergency contraception pills to rape victims. The DPH had said that church-run and other private hospitals could opt out of a new law requiring them to provide the pills . Romney vetoed [...]

Republicans in Congress will look to give final approval to an extension of the Patriot Act powers next week, but criticism from both parties may lead to a filibuster or even defeat of the measure in the Senate. House and Senate negotiators reached a compromise Thursday about the provisions of the bill, but Senate Democratic [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said that Poland housed the main CIA secret detention facility in Europe, with approximately 100 detainees. The accusations, published in the Polish daily, Gazeta Wyborcza , are based on information gathered from CIA sources and other documents obtained by the human rights group. The Polish facilities, according to HRW, were [...]

New Orleans Police Chief Warren Riley said Thursday that the city has fired 60 police officers and suspended 25 more for failing to show up for duty during Hurricane Katrina . Riley, who was sworn into office on Nov. 28, stated that cleaning the police department's image was a top priority. During the hurricane many [...]

A New York appeals court has overturned a lower court ruling that would have allowed a same-sex marriage in New York City. Earlier this year, New York City Supreme Court Justice Doris Ling-Cohan had ruled in favor of five gay couples complaining that the state's domestic relations law violated their equal protection and due process [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Sherrilyn Ifill of the University of Maryland School of Law says that US Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito has some serious explaining to do over positions on civil rights issues he took as a young and ambitious lawyer in the Reagan administration… When the draft records of President Bill Clinton were made [...]

US Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) , chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Thursday that he has started a formal inquiry into the Justice Department's handling of the Jose Padilla case. Padilla, a US citizen, had been held without charge for over three years as an enemy combatant on suspicion that he had been planning [...]