[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website] announced in a one line order [text, PDF] Monday that it would not grant a temporary stay in a case involving federal investigators' access to the phone records of two New York Times [media website] reporters. The Times filed suit to block access after US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald [Wikipedia backgrounder] attempted to obtain records of phone conversations involving Judith Miller [JURIST news archive] and Philip Shenon directly from their telecom providers. A Chicago grand jury is seeking to identify the sources that leaked information on the planned terrorism probe into the funding of two Islamic charities to the journalists in 2001. The federal government asked the Supreme Court [NYT report] Saturday not to impede the federal prosecutor because of the pressing time concerns over the Justice Department's investigation into the leaks. In August, the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals [official site] ruled [JURIST report] 2-1 in favor of the government, stating that the interests of law enforcement outweigh the reporters' constitutional protections under the First Amendment [text]. The Times was seeking a stay pending the court's ruling on its application for certiorari in the case.

The Supreme Court has not addressed the question of protecting journalists' confidential sources since 1972. Judith Miller [Wikipedia backgrounder] has previously been a subject [JURIST report] of a federal grand jury investigation regarding the identity leak [JURIST news archive] of CIA covert operative Valerie Plame. She was imprisoned for 85 days for failing to reveal her sources and has since left the Times. AP has more.

[JURIST] The Supreme Court of the Democratic Republic of Congo [JURIST news archive] in Kinshasa Monday rejected a legal challenge [JURIST report] by Vice President Jean-Pierre Bemba [campaign website, in French; Wikipedia profile] to the official results of last month's presidential run-off election [JURIST report]. The court declared the challenge unfounded and upheld the victory of incumbent Joseph Kabila [BBC profile; PPRD party website, in French], who was declared the winner by a margin of 16 points.

Voting fraud has been an issue [JURIST report] since the first round of the election in July. Last week, Bemba's supporters [MLC party website] set the Supreme Court on fire [JURIST report], forcing the court to relocate [JURIST report] some of its offices. More than 30 people have died [NYT report] in election-related violence. AFP has more.

[JURIST] US Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine [official website] has launched an internal investigation into the DOJ's use of intelligence gathered under the NSA's domestic surveillance program [JURIST news archive], according to a letter from Fine to Congressional leaders obtained by AP Monday. Fine has notified leaders of the House and Senate judiciary, intelligence and appropriations committees that his office is investigating the Justice Department's "controls and use of information related to the program" as well as its "compliance with legal requirements governing the program." Under the NSA Terrorist Surveillance Program [DOJ fact sheet, PDF], warrantless wiretaps are used to intercept telephone calls and e-mails of conversations of individuals suspected of being involved with the al Qaeda terrorist network if one of person is located outside the US.

After the program was first disclosed last year, inspectors general from both the DOJ and the Defense Department refused requests to investigate the program [JURIST report], with Fine citing a lack of jurisdiction. The DOJ request was referred to the department's Office of Professional Responsibility [official website], but the internal probe into the role DOJ lawyers played in designing the program was dropped [JURIST report] after the NSA denied investigators clearance to review all relevant documents. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales later said that President Bush personally put an end to the internal OPR investigation [JURIST report].

Fine's investigation will not cover the legality of the controversial program. In August, a federal judge ruled the program unconstitutional [JURIST report]; that decision is currently on appeal [JURIST report]. AP has more.

[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website; JURIST news archive] on Monday declined to review an Illinois Supreme Court decision setting aside a $10.1 billion verdict against Philip Morris USA [corporate website] for its marketing of "light" and "low-tar" cigarettes. The court issued its order in Price v. Philip Morris Inc. [docket] without comment. Late last year, the Illinois court dismissed the case [JURIST report], holding that US Federal Trade Commission regulations gave tobacco companies authority to denominate products as "light" or "low tar and nicotine" and that under the Illinois Consumer Fraud Act, companies cannot be held liable for behavior that has been specifically permitted by a regulatory body. Another case involving Philip Morris, challenging $80 million in punitive damages awarded in a wrongful death action against the company, was argued before the Supreme Court [JURIST reports] last month and remains pending. AP has more.

Among other cases in which the court denied certiorari Monday:

• Bassiouni v. FBI [docket], in which DePaul University law professor Mahmoud Cherif Bassiouni [academic profile; JURIST op-ed] sought to have his FBI file expunged. The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit court refused the request [opinion, PDF], finding the information in the file relevant to law enforcement activity. AP has more.
  
  
• Anderson v. Durham School Department [docket], an appeal from the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine challenging a statute [text] forbidding receipt of public money by religious schools. AP has more.
  
  
• McAllister v. Gonzales [docket], an appeal of a Third Circuit decision [PDF text] upholding a Board of Immigration Appeals decision allowing an asylum seeker to be removed from the United States because he was convicted of engaging in terrorist activities in Northern Ireland. AP has more.

[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website; JURIST news archive] heard oral arguments [transcript, PDF] Monday in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. [Duke Law case backgrounder; merits briefs], 05-1074, a case that addresses whether and when a plaintiff may sue for pay discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 [text] if the disparate pay was received during the statutory limitations period but resulted from decisions that fall outside the period. Lilly Ledbetter, who worked at Goodyear for 19 years, alleged that she received less pay than male counterparts because of sex discrimination. After a jury in the Northern District of Alabama returned a verdict for more than $3.5 million in damages, the district court awarded Ledbetter $360,000. The US Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed [opinion, PDF], holding that the district court should have granted Goodyear's motion for judgment as a matter of law because the statute required Ledbetter to file her complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) [official website] within six months of the alleged illegal employment practice. Lawyers for Goodyear and the US Department of Justice argued Monday that allowing Ledbetter's claim would "undo" the statute of limitations in pay discrimination cases, while Ledbetter's attorneys asserted that each paycheck represented a discriminatory act. All of the justices except Clarence Thomas [LII profile], a former EEOC chairman, participated in the questioning. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg appeared to doubt whether the statute of limitations should apply to claims alleging pay disparities that widened over a period of years, while Chief Justice John Roberts expressed concern about claims surfacing long after the alleged discriminatory act. AP has more.

Also Monday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments [transcript, PDF] in Bell Atlantic Corporation v. Twombly [Duke Law case backgrounder; merits briefs], 05-1126, an antitrust case addressing whether a complaint under the Sherman Act [text] must allege specific facts showing that the defendants participated in a conspiracy, or whether a conspiracy may be inferred from their "parallel conduct." William Twombly filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that telephone and Internet service providers created after the breakup of AT&T in the early 1980s conspired by blocking local competitors from their service areas and agreeing not to compete with one another. The US District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim, but the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit vacated the judgment and remanded [opinion, PDF], finding Twombly's pleading sufficient. At oral argument, Twombly's lawyers contended that a higher pleading standard would defeat meritorious claims by plaintiffs who can obtain evidence of conspiracy only through discovery. The defendants argued that a lower standard encourages companies to settle meritless cases - a position echoed by Justice Stephen Breyer, who said that a lax standard would allow plaintiffs to "sue half the firms in the economy." AP has more.

[JURIST] An Italian judge adjourned the tax fraud trial of former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] and British lawyer David Mills [Guardian profile] Monday after Berlusconi collapsed during a speech [AP report; recorded video] in Florence Sunday. Berlusconi's lawyers requested time for Berlusconi to recover, and the trial will likely resume on Friday. In July, a judge ruled [JURIST report] that Berlusconi should stand trial on charges of embezzlement, false accounting, tax fraud and money laundering in connection with a TV rights deal involving Berlusconi's company, Mediaset [corporate website]. In October, an Italian court ordered [JURIST report] Berlusconi and Mills to face an additional trial to begin in March 2007.

Last week, a judge refused a request [JURIST report] by Berlusconi and Mills to have one of the judges removed from presiding over his tax fraud trial. The two defendants had asked Judge Edoardo d'Avossa to remove himself [JURIST report] from the current trial, citing d'Avossa's involvement with other Berlusconi trials, including the "Medusa" case, which ultimately resulted in the former prime minister's acquittal on false accounting charges. D'Avossa had offered to step aside, but a supervisory judge rejected that offer on Wednesday. UPI has more.

[JURIST] The Iraqi Parliament [official website, in Arabic] Monday indefinitely barred journalists from sessions of parliament as part of efforts by Iraq's National Security Council [FAS backgrounder] to stop contradictory statements made by Iraqi politicians, according to Reuters. Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashadani told members of parliament that reporters should be banned from parliament sessions because the media "may increase tension," and ordered cameras producing televised access to floor debate turned off. A spokesman for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki [official website, in Arabic] added that the decision by the National Security Council to bar journalists from access to parliament sessions was designed to "make sure people speak with one voice to the media."

The decision was made after conflicting media accounts of recent sectarian violence and political reactions to that. Last week President Jalal Talabani [official website] blamed the media for Thursday's killing of over 200 people in Baghdad's Shiite-dominated Sadr City [CNN report], saying that the attacks occurred because of the media's portrayal of attacks on a Sunni neighborhood earlier that day. Reuters has more. Iraqi independent news agency Voices of Iraq quoted al-Mashadani as saying [VOI report] Monday that "a recommendation was made at the Political Council of National Security as to accelerating an agreeable legal formula to deal with corrupted media men as well as dealing with the good journalists" and that "directives were given to lawmakers to reduce and even to avoid making statements before and after a parliament session."

[JURIST] Chilean Judge Victor Montiglio indicted former dictator Augusto Pinochet [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] Monday and placed him under house arrest in connection with the firing-squad deaths of two of former President Salvador Allende's bodyguards during the so-called Caravan of Death [BBC backgrounder] that followed the coup in which Pinochet seized power and Allende was killed. Pinochet was originally charged in the case in 2000, but the Supreme Court of Chile [official website] ruled in 2002 that he was unfit to stand trial because of dementia and other ailments. In July, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court's ruling [JURIST report] stripping Pinochet of immunity in the homicide case for bodyguards Wagner Salinas and Francisco Lara. Last year, the high court ruled [JURIST report] that Pinochet was not too ill to stand trial on separate charges of human right abuses.

Judge Alejandro Solis initially placed Pinochet under house arrest in October [JURIST report], marking Pinochet's first detention on torture charges, in connection with 36 cases of kidnapping, 23 cases of torture and a single case of homicide at the Villa Grimaldi prison [Wikipedia backgrounder], an infamous political detention center operated by Pinochet's secret police between 1974 and 1977. AP has more. El Mercurio has local coverage. In an extraordinary statement released on his 91st birthday Saturday Pinochet publicly assumed "full political responsibility" [JURIST report] for the actions of his 1973-90 military regime. Pinochet nonetheless justified the military coup against Socialist Salvador Allende that brought him to power as having being necessary to preserve Chile's integrity amid "the continuation and worsening of the worse political and economic crisis than one can remember."

[JURIST] Israel is willing to release many Palestinian prisoners [speech transcript], even long-term detainees, if Palestinian militants agree to free Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit [Times backgrounder], Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert [official website; BBC profile] said Monday. Shalit was captured in Gaza [JURIST report] on June 25, and his detention helped spark the latest round of violence [JURIST news archive] in the region over the summer.

As early as July, the Israel Defense Forces said it would support a deal to release some Palestinian prisoners [JURIST report] in exchange for Shalit, and Egyptian negotiators have also been involved [JURIST report] in prisoner trade talks. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] China's State Council [official backgrounder] is considering a draft resolution that would establish a national agency to regulate organ transplants in the wake of international criticism over Chinese organ transplant practices. Chinese health officials have admitted that the majority of organs for transplant come from executed prisoners, and while China formally requires informed consent [JURIST report] from the prisoners or their families, doubt exists as to how the procedures are enforced. Earlier this month, Human Rights Watch (HRW) demanded that China disclose organ donor statistics [JURIST report] to the public. Other critics suggest that the organ trade is a lucrative black-market business in China relatively ignored by officials.

In March, the Chinese Ministry of Health [official website, in Chinese] issued a general ban on the sale of human organs [JURIST report] that took effect on July 1. The Ministry also issued new regulations [JURIST report] in August intended to counter unauthorized international trade in organs. The policy changes followed international criticism [JURIST report] that human organs taken from executed prisoners were sold to foreigners. The proposed organ transplant oversight rules would also restrict the number of hospitals permitted to perform transplants. AP has more.

[JURIST] Thailand's military leaders decided Monday to lift martial law in 40 of the country's 76 provinces, pending the approval of Thai Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont [official website; BBC profile]. Thailand has been under a state of martial law since the Thai military seized power from civilian prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra [JURIST news archive] in a bloodless coup [JURIST report] in September. The Council for National Security [official website, in Thai], the country's military council, did not specify which provinces would return to normalcy, but coup leader and Army Commander-in-Chief General Sonthi Boonyaratglin [BBC profile] indicated Monday that border provinces would remain under martial law.

Sonthi promised [JURIST report] last week that martial law would be eliminated by the end of the year. The US has urged Thailand to lift martial law [JURIST report], pulling almost $24 million in funding from the Thai government. Human rights groups have also called for martial law to be lifted [JURIST report], saying it is contradictory to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights [text]. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] Saddam Hussein's genocide trial [JURIST news archive] resumed Monday with testimony from witnesses describing how Hussein's soldiers executed civilians during the "Anfal" campaigns [HRW backgrounder] against ethnic Kurds in northern Iraq from 1987 to 1988. All seven defendants appeared in court, though several were represented by court-appointed lawyers while members of the defense team continue their boycott [JURIST report] of the proceedings.

In a separate case and ruling issued earlier this month, Hussein was sentenced to death [JURIST report] for crimes against humanity [charging instrument, PDF] committed in the Iraqi town of Dujail [JURIST news archive; BBC trial timeline]. An appeals panel is expected to rule [JURIST report] on the verdict and sentence by mid-January 2007. Prosecutors hope to complete the Anfal trial before Hussein is executed. BBC News has more.

[JURIST] Serbian war crimes suspect Vojislav Seselj [BBC profile; ICTY case backgrounder] failed to appear in court Monday as his trial began at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) [official website]. The court subsequently stripped Seselj of his right to represent himself [press release] and summoned court-appointed defense lawyers to represent him. Seselj, who has been on hunger strike [JURIST report] for two weeks, also skipped a pre-trial hearing last week. According to the ICTY:

In coming to its decision, the Trial Chamber considered various factors: the conduct of the accused especially in the period since the Appeals Chamber's decision of 20 October 2006, the warnings that have been issued to the accused by the Chamber during the status conferences on 8 and 22 November 2006 and by the Appeals Chamber in its decision, the fact that the accused has failed to respond to the Trial Chamber's invitation of 22 November to make submissions regarding his conduct and the question of his legal representation, as well as the fact that the accused persists in not taking food and that he persists in being absent from the proceedings. Finally, the Chamber concluded that the accused's self-representation in the course of the period since ... 20 October 2006, "has substantially obstructed the proper and expeditious conduct of the proceedings" and found that "permanent assignment of counsel to represent the accused... is at this point justified".

[JURIST] Many of the efforts to soften the corporate accountability reforms of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act [PDF text; SEC materials] are being pushed by the same corporations that employed questionable accounting and business practices before the Sarbanes-Oxley reforms, New York state attorney general and governor-elect Eliot Spitzer [JURIST news archive] said in an interview with the Financial Times published Monday. Last week, US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson [official profile] accused Sarbanes-Oxley of raising the cost of doing business in America [transcript; Bloomberg report], citing declining share sales since 2002 as one example of its impact, and recommended legislative tweaks to the Act, especially to the internal control structure requirements of Section 404 [KPMG backgrounder]. Spitzer said Monday that individual corporations are responsible for their own poor performances, and that corporate accountability and ethics will strengthen US markets in the long run.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act has been an object of criticism since its passage in the wake of the Enron debacle and other high-profile corporate scandals. Rep. Michael Oxley, one of the law's co-sponsors, said last year that the legislation was "rushed" and included "excessive" corporate reforms [JURIST report]. A GAO report earlier this year noted that an increasing number of small businesses are going private [JURIST report] in order to avoid disproportionately higher costs of complying with the law, prompting several senators to urge regulators to find ways to make it less onerous for smaller companies to comply. The Financial Times has more.

[JURIST] An Australian government commission investigating Australian participation in the now-defunct UN oil-for-food program [JURIST news archive] in Iraq has recommended that criminal charges be brought against 12 business executives for paying kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's former regime [JURIST report]. In a report [commission materials] formally submitted to Parliament [AG statement] Monday, the Cole Commission [official website] confirmed earlier UN reports that the Australian Wheat Board (AWB) [corporate website] paid roughly $220 million in kickbacks to secure $2.3 billion in grain contracts.

The report found no evidence of government misconduct, although an AWB executive testified [hearing transcripts] that Australian officials knew of the kickbacks by March 2001. Australian Prime Minister Howard, who has repeatedly any denied government wrongdoing, on Monday agreed to establish a police task force [transcript] to consider prosecuting the 12 executives, as proposed by the Cole Commission report. AP has more.