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Turkey's parliamentary speaker on Saturday proposed a new constitution and re-establishment of an upper house of parliament, apparently with the aim of reducing the power of the country's top court. The Constitutional Court infuriated the Islamic-oriented government on Thursday by rejecting legislation that would have lifted a ban on Muslim headscarves in universities. It said the move would violate Turkey's secular principles. Speaker Koksal Toptan, speaking in a hall at the parliament, said re-installing the upper house, or Senate, would remove what he called "the pressure on the court." The Senate was abolished after Turkey's 1980 military coup on the...

John McCain is getting catcalls for his speech on Tuesday declaring his preference for Supreme Court Justices in the mold of John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

PARIS - France's highest court Tuesday rejected as unlawful the first marriage by a gay couple in France, annulling the union of the two men. Stephane Charpin and Bertrand Charpentier were married in a civil ceremony on June 5, 2004, in Begles, a town in the southwest Bordeaux region. The government immediately said the union was outside the law, and a series of court decisions unfavorable to the couple followed. In the latest decision, the court ruled that "under French law, marriage is a union between a man and a woman," backing a 2005 decision by an appeals court in...

Court to rule: Will Israel compensate Palestinians? Nine High Court judges asked to rule on legality of 'Intifada Law,' which deprives Palestinians of their right to claim compensation for damages caused by security forces Aviram Zino Published: 12.12.06, 01:59 The High Court on Tuesday is expected to submit its ruling on a petition filed by nine human rights organizations, which demanded to cancel a legislation which prevents Palestinians from claiming compensation from the State. The court ruling will be given by an extended panel of nine judges. The organizations claimed that "the amendment to the civil Damages Law, which deprives...

WASHINGTON The Supreme Court waded back into the issue of prison sentences Wednesday to determine when a judge's discretion to impose additional time behind bars violates a convict's constitutional rights. In two major rulings since 2004, the court has said that systems that allow judges alone to decide facts that lead to longer prison terms violate a defendant's Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial. The lawyer for a former California police officer told justices Wednesday that the state's sentencing law is another such example. John Cunningham should have been sentenced to 12 years in prison after a jury convicted...

High Court approves weapons transfer to Abbas JPost.com Staff, THE JERUSALEM POST Jun. 15, 2006 The High Court of Justice ruled on Thursday against three pleas demanding that weapons not be transferred to Palestinians. The pleas were submitted by various groups representing terror victims. The government decided several weeks ago to hand over weapons to security forces protecting Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

JERUSALEM - Israel's high court Sunday narrowly upheld a controversial law that restricts the right of Palestinians to live in Israel with their Arab Israeli spouses and children. The law, imposed in 2002 at the height of Israeli-Palestinian fighting, is believed to have kept hundreds, and possibly thousands, of West Bank and Gaza Palestinians from moving to Israel to live with their families. The law states that only Palestinian women over the age of 25 and men over 35 are eligible to join their families in Israel and eventually receive citizenship. A panel judges voted 6-5 against a petition to...

NEW YORK - The job of a justice on the nation's highest court is to patrol the boundaries of American society, not to decide what kind of society it should have, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer said Tuesday. People are suspicious of what the court does and think it intrudes into what they do, Breyer said. "Democracy has boundaries, or rails," he said during a luncheon at New York Law School. "We are the boundary patrol." The 68-year-old justice noted that the word democracy is not found in the Constitution. But the concept, he said, is there. "When you understand...

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday heard oral arguments on Texas' controversial 2003 redistricting plan, putting a spotlight on constitutional issues that have sometimes been overshadowed by the political drama surrounding House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's role in the case. Conceived as part of DeLay's strategy to give the Texas GOP extra seats in the House and thus cement Republican control, the plan was enacted over the dramatic protests of Texas Democratic lawmakers who at one point fled the state to avoid voting on it. The state indictment that forced DeLay to quit as majority leader alleges illegalities in...

Judges rule government's economic policy favors Jewish communities over Arab ones; demand legislation, clear criteria be implemented in classification of communities in need The High Court of Justice unanimously ruled Monday that the Israeli government has exercised discriminative policies against the Arab population in the country, and stated the government must set clear criteria to define National Preference Zones, where affirmative action is implemented. The court accepted a petition by Adalah, The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights, submitted three years ago, in which the organization charged that vague and unclear criteria for National Preference Zones result in discrimination against...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to stay the execution of convicted killer Michael Morales. Justice Anthony Kennedy reviewed the case, then sent it to the full court, which denied Morales' final appeal at 6:29 p.m. EST, according to court spokesman Ed Turner. "The court entered orders denying the request for stays of execution," he said. The Supreme court was the only legal option left for Morales, 46, who is scheduled to die from lethal injection at 12:01 a.m. at San Quentin State Prison for killing teenager Terri Winchell, of Lodi. He would become the...

WASHINGTON - President Bush on Monday nominated White House counsel Harriet Miers to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court, reaching into his loyal inner circle for another pick that could reshape the nation's judiciary for years to come. "She has devoted her life to the rule of law and the cause of justice," Bush said as his first Supreme Court pick, Chief Justice John Roberts, took the bench for the first time just a few blocks from the White House. "She will be an outstanding addition to the Supreme Court of the United States." If confirmed...

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court opens its term Monday with a young new leader, a veteran justice eager to retire and a calendar packed with contentious issues such as abortion, assisted suicide and capital punishment. For the first time in 33 years, William H. Rehnquist will not be on the court. The 80-year-old chief justice died Sept. 3. Every day since, the flags in front of the court have flown at half-staff. The Rehnquist court becomes the Roberts court following a brief tradition-rich ceremony for John Roberts, who learned about the inner workings of the place a quarter-century ago while...

WASHINGTON - President Bush, closing in on another nomination of a new Supreme Court justice, has completed his consultations with the Senate about who should fill the seat of retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, a White House spokesman said Friday. Bush was expected to announce his choice in the next few days. White House press secretary Scott McClellan ruled out an announcement Friday but otherwise indicated the nomination could come anytime. The president, leaving the White House Friday afternoon for a weekend at Camp David, offered reporters only a slight grin and a shrug when asked if he had made...

A state Supreme Court ruling upholding the legality of the California Coastal Commission in June has been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Sacramento attorney Ronald A. Zumbrun filed the appeal yesterday on behalf of the Marine Forests Society, a nonprofit group dedicated to creating and restoring marine habitats. "Our contention is that the California Supreme Court, by acting in an abrupt and arbitrary manner, denied my client due process and the right to just compensation for its property interests," Zumbrun said. Marine Forests Society challenged the commission's legality in 1999 after the agency forced it to remove an artificial...

Supreme Court nominee Judge John Roberts, while serving as the head of Hogan & Hartson’s appellate division, spent about a dozen hours working on behalf of Playboy Entertainment Group in a case before the Supreme Court in 1999, his former colleague told HUMAN EVENTS. Roberts played the role of a Supreme Court justice in a moot court setting, preparing Playboy’s lead counsel, Robert Corn-Revere, who worked in Hogan & Hartson’s communications department, for his oral argument before the Supreme Court, Corn-Revere confirmed to HUMAN EVENTS. “In the 3-and-a-half to 4 years we worked on that case,” Corn-Revere said, “John may...

Some of you folks may be aware of the AFA (American Family Assn). If not, this email from them, requesting action, is new to you. I feel so strongly about this issue I decided to post that including my response here for your consideration in the hope that you will 'lift' it nad join us in the effort to reduce the chance of these hearings becoming a demonRAT platform for political posing.

WASHINGTON - If constitutional interpretation were race-car driving, the US Supreme Court term that ended this week would be notable more for applying the brakes than hitting the accelerator. Two key areas of conservative jurisprudence hit speed bumps in major rulings - property rights and federalism, or states' rights. As a result, the so-called federalism revolution is suddenly looking a lot less revolutionary. Some analysts are questioning whether the "Rehnquist Court" under conservative Chief Justice William Rehnquist might be better described as the "Stevens Court," in recognition of the behind-the-scenes role of Justice John Paul Stevens in assembling majorities supporting...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court's history on right-to-die cases is pretty thin. It ruled in 1990 that a terminally ill person has a right to refuse life-sustaining treatment. And next term it plans to consider whether the federal government can prosecute doctors who help ill patients die. Between those cases, the court has not said much, choosing to allow states to decide the issue. Terri Schiavo's case offers a number of legal questions for the court to consider if, as expected, it reaches the justices. Among them is whether she actually requested that artificial means not be used to...

The High Court of Justice examined on Wednesday a petition filed by the Legal Center for Research on Terrorism against the government's decision to release 500 Palestinian prisoners as goodwill gesture to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. The Israel Prison Service published Wednesday the names of the prisoners to be released in the next few days. The name were published in order to allow the filing of petitions against the release. In an unusually political reply, the High Court of Justice Vice President, Justice Mishael Cheshin said: "The prime minister says that in his opinion the release of 500 Palestinian...