Kenneth Anderson, Washington College of Law American University: "One thing that is missing in the whole torture-interrogation debate is the question of who you are interrogating. Can you use a different level of interrogation on Zarqawi, for example – knowing it is Zarqawi – than you could on someone who might indeed turn out to [...]

Israel's Supreme Court ruled Thursday that thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody would not be eligible to vote in Paletinian elections scheduled for January 9. Chief Justice Aharon Barak said that Israel would not have time at this stage to prepare for including the prisoners in existing voting procedures. The ruling is not yet [...]

White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, President Bush's nominee for Attorney General, explicitly told the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning that "torture and abuse would not be tolerated" under his leadership of the Justice Department, that the Geneva Conventions would be honored "wherever they apply", and that the US generally would abide by all (orally emphasizing [...]

AP is reporting that Democrats will force debate in both the House and Senate on the Ohio election returns before formally certifying President Bush's re-election today. This is only the second time since 1877 that pre-certification debates have been forced. The debates, which will disrupt what would have been a routine joint session of Congress [...]

The Texas 1st Court of Appeals has overturned Andrea Yates' capital murder convictions in the drownings of her children, ruling that false testimony by a state expert witness could have affected the judgment of the jury. Read the full text of the opinion here. The Houston Chronicle has more.

The US Supreme Court announced Wednesday that Chief Justice William Rehnquist has returned to the court to work part-time, but it is as yet uncertain when or if he will actually return to the bench when the Court resumes hearing cases Monday. Rehnquist, 80, is undergoing cancer treatment and has already canceled a two-week course [...]

In an exclusive JURIST op-ed before his testimony today before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Admiral John Hutson (Ret. USN), former Navy Judge Advocate General and now President and Dean of Franklin Pierce Law Center, says that Judge Alberto Gonzales' reading of the Geneva Conventions on the protection of prisoners has been short-sighted and dangerous, has [...]

Log of (and links to) FBI records obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act request for documents concerning the treatment and interrogation of detainees in United States custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, released January 5, 2005. Review the log of the documents here, with descriptions of contents. Reported [...]

FBI documents released Wednesday by the ACLU following a Freedom of Information Act request show repeated FBI concern over and disapproval of military interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but also indicate that FBI investigation of the practices was scaled back after July 2004 for reasons as yet unclear. The documents were released one day [...]

UN officials have begun working with Indonesian government authorities to set up a child registration system that will help prevent and forestall illegal child trafficking in the wake of last week's South Asia tsunami that is now estimated to have killed 150,000, leaving tens of thousands of children homeless across the region. A UNICEF spokeman [...]