Spc. Sean Baker, an ex-US military policeman, has sued the Pentagon alleging that his constitutional rights were violated during an assault by fellow soldiers in a January 2003 training session that went awry in Guantanamo Bay. Baker voluntarily dressed in an orange jumpsuit and was told to act as an unruly detainee in a training [...]

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops Friday voted to extend a policy to ban abusive priests from working in the church by a margin of 228-4. The Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People , originally written in 2002, has prompted the removal of hundreds of clergy accused of abusing children during the [...]

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has spoken out against the United Nations Reform Act of 2005 , passed by the US House of Representatives on Friday, which will cut 50% of US dues to the organization if the UN does not meet certain reform goals. The UN's 60th General Assembly Summit is scheduled to be held [...]

UN Reform Act, passed by US House of Representatives on June 17, 2005 . Read the full text of the bill here. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

MasterCard announced late Friday that a security lapse at CardSystems Solutions , a third-party processing company in Tuscon, Arizona, has potentially exposed more than 40 million cards to fraud, and that it has notified banks of the problem. Some 13.9 of the cards affected carry the MasterCard brand. In a statement, Mastercard said that "vulnerabilities [...]

Leading Friday's states brief, the Iowa Supreme Court today refused to address the ruling of a lower court that dissolved a Vermont civil union . The Supreme Court did not judge the merits of the legal claim made by conservative challengers, but instead found that the Iowa Family Policy Center, a church and several state [...]

Texas Governor Rick Perry Friday signed into law legislation which creates a new life-without-parole sentencing option in state capital murder cases. Previously, Texas juries have only had the option of sentencing offenders to death or life in prison with the possibility of parole after 40 years. The widely supported bill , which goes into effect [...]

A UN panel has expressed "great concern" at the increase in unsentenced detainees in Canadian prisons following recent federal sentencing reform . There are currently in Canada more incarcerated persons awaiting trial or sentencing than there are persons actually serving a sentence. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention visited 13 detention centers across the [...]

The lower chamber of the Republican-controlled Wisconsin Legislature approved a ban of the morning-after pill on state college campuses Thursday, sending the bill to the state Senate. The proposed legislation would ban University of Wisconsin System health centers from advertising, prescribing, or dispensing emergency contraception to its more than 161,000 students on 26 campuses. The [...]

Leading Friday's corporations and securities law news, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has been sued by the US Department of the Treasury's Comptroller of the Currency and by the Clearing House , a group representing national banks. The suit is an effort to stop Spitzer’s office from subpoenaing information from banks over accusations of [...]