Law
Apparently, U.S. Contractors in Iraq Are No Longer Above the Law
Daphne Eviatar wrote an excellent piece last week pointing out that private contractors in Iraq are not currently subject to any U.S., Iraqi or international law. More than five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq that finally may be about to change.
Are Contractors Above the Law?
Contractors operating abroad claim they are immune from lawsuits because they work for the U.S. military.
Boumediene: Victory of Law
The decision also raises questions about the future of the Guantanamo Bay facility's 270 detainees.
California's Oily Justices
Former employee Braxton Berkley was one of hundreds to sue Lockheed Martin and other chemical supply companies—some of which are among the world’s largest oil companies—for injuries resulting from exposure to toxic chemicals. Berkley, who says the injuries resulted from his work on military planes, appealed his case to the California Supreme Court. But the case was dismissed.
Why? Four out of seven justices held stock in some of those oil companies, and therefore couldn’t rule on the case.
Can Canada Sway SCOTUS?
At the end of June, the Supreme Court is due to issue a ruling in the Guantanamo Bay habeas corpus case. A similar Canadian decision raises intriguing questions.
Captain Kangaroo's Wacky Guantanamo War-Crimes Trials
Speaking of kangaroo courts, Josh White had a great piece in the Washington Post yesterday about the military tribunals, known as military commissions, currently underway for the 9/11 conspirators held at Guantanamo. (The Justice Dept. is taking the position that last week's Boumediene ruling doesn't affect the tribunals.) The cases against them are, in many respects, predicated on classified information. A basic feature of any adversarial system of justice -- and particularly, you know, ours -- is that the accused has the right to view the evidence against him or her. Oh well.
Carl Levin on Boumediene
Fresh from the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee:
Court of the People?
The judiciary deserves a look these days, with the next president expected to replace two or three aging Supreme Court Justices.
EFF, ACLU Intervene in Wikileaks Case
Last week a Federal judge in San Francisco "shutdown" the whistleblower site Wikileaks over a private dispute between a Cayman Islands bank and a disgruntled former employee. The former employee posted company documents to Wikileaks, which the bank claims violated a confidentiality agreement and banking laws.
Online rights group, Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU have now intervened in the lawsuit, the bank filed against the site and Dynadot, Wikileaks' domain registrar. EFF and ACLU argue that Judge Jeffrey S. White should not have ordered the closure of the entire site -- an unecessarily far-reaching move.
Ends & Means in War Crimes Trials
Osama bin Laden's alleged driver, Salim Hamdan, was convicted on five of 10 charges. Meanwhile, a former Serbian leader stands trial in The Hague. Will future generations deem both as just verdicts?
Experts Predict Slew of Torture Suits
Last week the Second Circuit Court of Appeals decided to take a second look at the case of a Canadian citizen interrogated by the U.S. in Syria.
Guantanamo Trial Unraveling
The case of Omar Khadr shows why the U.S. shouldn't use new procedures for terrorism prosecutions
Habeas Case Quietly Heads to Supreme Court
The case demands attention because it presents in stark relief two key questions of governments extraterritorial detentions.
Hamdan the Guinea Pig
If the first war crimes trial coming out of the Bush administration’s “war on terror” was supposed to showcase the horrors of the enemy and our government’s successful pursuit of justice, it appears instead to be highlighting the absurdities of the administration’s prosecution of its ill-defined war.
In Solidarity With TPM Muckraker
This is an easy call, especially since Laura and I used to work for Talking Points Memo. But every journalist and citizen of conscience should stand shoulder-to-shoulder with TPM now that the Justice Department has engaged in a sickening course of petty retaliation.
In late 2006 and 2007, TPM's Josh Marshall, Paul Kiel and Justin Rood relentlessly pursued the U.S. attorney firings. It wasn't easy, either substantively, or against the media tide. Jay Carney at Time sneered, "some liberals are seeing broad partisan conspiracies where none likely exist." Well, they existed. Without TPM, Alberto Gonzales would still be attorney general. Simple and plain.
Judicial Partisanship Awards
Is it true that liberal justices are more partisan than conservatives ?
Justice Dept. Auditor Gives Long Version Of Why Monica Goodling Broke Law
Attention summer beach readers: As JJ mentioned in his "State of Play" post, the Justice Dept. inspector general released an eight-chapter, 146-page report today on how the Attorney General's office of Alberto Gonzales illegally played politics with its hiring. We've known for more than a year that Monica Goodling, the former Justice Dept. White House liaison, and Kyle Sampson, chief of staff for Gonzales and Goodling's immediate supervisor, violated federal govt. policy -- and federal law -- by taking into account the political affiliations of candidates for career Dept. positions. Today's report, though, details Goodling's remarkable lack of subtlety in her zeal for a more Republican Justice Dept.
Legal Theory Seeks to Curtail Tort Cases
A House committee hopes to prevent the spread of a legal doctrine that shields industry from consumer lawsuits.
Lively Cast of Characters Want Last-Minute Pardons From Bush
The New York Times' Charlie Savage reported this weekend that the Justice Dept. has received about 2,300 petitions from felons seeking a pardon in the Bush administration's final months. The petitioners include former California Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham who's spending eight years in prison for accepting a combined $2.4 million in bribes. Marion Jones, the gold-medal winning sprinter who admitted she used to steroids to win her gold medals, has petitioned the White House to end her six-month prison sentence. And 80's enthusiasts will appreciate that junk bond financier Michael Milken, who served jail for securities fraud, is also asking for clemency.
Mukasey Won't Enforce the Law -- Again
Once again, Attorney General Michael Mukasey has announced that he will not be enforcing the law. Taking another “let-bygones-be-bygones” approach, he told the American Bar Association yesterday that he's not going to bother prosecuting anyone in the Justice Dept. for illegally hiring career government lawyers based on political considerations rather than merit.
