New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Saturday that the city will appeal Friday's state court ruling that denying same-sex couples the right to marry violates the state constitution. Bloomberg had previously made conflicting statements about the issue. He said city lawyers had told him the state constitution does not allow for gay marriage, but [...]

Richard Posner, University of Chicago Law School: "One of the commonest objections to President Bush's proposal for reform of social security is that there is no need to act now because there is no "crisis." Yet the same people who say this are wont to say that a weakness of government is its failure to [...]

A Cook County (Chicago) judge has ruled that a couple may file a wrongful death suit against the fertility clinic that accidently discarded their embryos. Judge Jeffrey Lawrence held Friday that "a pre-embryo is a 'human being' … whether or not it is implanted in its mother's womb." He relied on Illinois's Wrongful Death Act [...]

New US Secretary of State Condeleezza Rice , currently on an eight-day get-acquainted junket through Europe and the Middle East, said Saturday in Turkey that Russia needed to improve its track record on democracy. She told reporters: It is important that Russia make clear to the world that it is intent on strengthening the rule [...]

Martin Mubanga , one of four British nationals recently released from the US terror suspect detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, says he plans to sue the British government for its role in his 3-year incarceration without charge or trial. Mubanga, who is also a Zambian citizen, claims that an British MI6 intelligence officer who [...]

Military prosecutors have dropped a principal charge against former US army reservist Sabrina Harman , one of several US soldiers accused of abusing Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The dropped charge pertains to viewing and failing to prevent the sexual abuse of prisoners. Several other charges against Harman were dropped in August, [...]

Top Shiite clerics in Iraq have called for Islam to be the sole source of legislation for the county's new constitution, set to be drafted by the members of the country's Transitional National Assembly chosen in the recent elections. The call is said to be supported by Shiite spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and [...]

Sudan's state-run news agency Saturday quoted the country's vice-president as saying that Sudan would not extradite any Sudanese suspected of war crimes for trial in foreign courts. Vice President Ali Osman Mohammed Taha said that such trials, possibly at the International Criminal Court in The Hague or in a special regional tribunal, would constitute "something [...]

Hundreds of thousands of French workers took to the streets Saturday to protest pending legislation that would allow for extensions of France's 35-hour workweek. The legislation, first announced in December and scheduled for first reading in the National Assembly this week , would permit companies to negotiate with workers for increased overtime. The reduced workweek [...]

Jack Balkin, Yale Law School: "In Hernandez v. Robles a New York State trial court judge held that the New York State constitution prohibited restricting marriage to opposite sex couples. The court held that prohibition on same sex couples violated the Due Process Clause and Equal Protection Clauses of the New York State Constitution. The [...]