The number of death sentences handed down by Chinese courts in the first five months of 2007 has decreased following the implementation of reforms which require all death sentences to receive the approval of the Supreme People's Court , Chinese state media reported Thursday. Citing statistics from the Beijing No. 1 and No. 2 Intermediate [...]

The US Senate voted 50-45 late Thursday to reject a cloture motion for the proposed Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 Thursday, falling 10 votes short of limiting the debate on the legislation to thirty-hours and restricting the introduction of new amendments. The failure of the motion, supported by senators who wanted to push the [...]

JURIST Contributing Editor David Crane of Syracuse University College of Law, former Chief Prosecutor for the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone, says that despite the absence of former Liberian president and indicted war criminal Charles Taylor from the opening of his trial before an SCSL panel sitting at an ICC courtroom in The Hague, [...]

The US Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday voted 11-8 in support of a measure that would return habeas corpus rights to terror suspects imprisoned at the Guantanamo Bay military prison. The Habeas Corpus Restoration Act of 2007 , sponsored by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), would allow Guantanamo detainees to challenge their [...]

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and new French President Nicolas Sarkozy agreed at the G8 summit in Germany Thursday that the controversial European constitution should be reconstituted into a "simplified treaty" whose ratification would not require the support of the voters of individual countries. Voters in France and the Netherlands notoriously rejected the original draft [...]

Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Luis Moreno-Ocampo Thursday renewed his call for the arrests of two top suspects accused of committing war crimes in the Darfur region of Sudan . Moreno-Ocampo briefed UN Security Council (UNSC) delegates one week prior to their joint trip with African Union (AU) representatives to several African [...]

Lawyers for former US vice-presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby asked a federal judge Thursday to delay Libby's prison sentence because they felt they have a good chance of winning an appeal of his conviction. Libby was found guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice in March, and sentenced to 2 1/2- years in prison [...]

UK Home Secretary John Reid proposed a number of changes to UK anti-terror laws in a statement to the House of Commons Thursday, calling for longer pre-charge detention of terror suspects, "enhanced" sentences, allowing electronic intercepts as evidence, and institution of "stop and question" powers for police. No formal legislation has been introduced as yet, [...]

Chile's chief prosecutor Thursday urged that former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori be extradited to Peru to face charges of corruption and human rights abuses, some arising from the 1992 Cantuta University massacre in which nine students and a university professor were "disappeared" by the Peruvian military. The prosecutor released her recommendation before a Chilean court [...]

Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2007, passed by the US House of Representatives, June 7, 2007 . Read the full text of the bill . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.