The Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, announced reforms to judicial working dress Thursday, abolishing the traditional wigs , wing collars, and bands for civil and family court judges, as well as advocates in civil proceedings. Judges sitting in criminal proceedings will continue to be dressed in traditional attire. [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Glenn Sulmasy, a professor of law at the US Coast Guard Academy who made the case for a US national security court on JURIST a year before a recent op-ed backing the proposal ran in the New York Times, says that implementing a new court system will provide new opportunities for success [...]

The US House Appropriations Committee voted Thursday to defeat two independent bids by lawmakers that would have repealed part or all of the "Tiahrt Amendment" , which since 2003 has restricted the public release of information provided by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives regarding gun sales. Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) Tuesday introduced [...]

The latest proposal for a UN-supervised independence plan for Kosovo has been rejected by the Russian government, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Thursday. The US, France and the UK offered the revision to a June draft resolution in an attempt to compromise with Russia and Serbia, which oppose independence. Previous proposals called for immediate [...]

Former Chadian president Hissene Habre , who has been charged with crimes against humanity, will stand trial before a Senegalese criminal court, rather than before a special tribunal as previously decided, Senegal's Justice Minister Sheik Tidiane Sy said Thursday. At an assembly last year, leaders of the African Union decided that Habre would face trial [...]

A panel of the US House Judiciary Committee voted Thursday to move forward with contempt proceedings against former White House counsel Harriet Miers after she ignored a subpoena ordering her to appear and testify at a hearing regarding the firings of federal prosecutors . The Judiciary Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law voted 7-5 to [...]

United States of America v. I. Lewis Libby, US District Court for the District of Columbia, July 12, 2007 . Read the full text of the opinion . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

A series of interviews with US veterans of the Iraq war shows a pattern of systematic human rights abuses, according to a new report in The Nation . The magazine calls the investigation, which yielded thousands of pages of typed testimony, "the first time so many on-the-record, named eyewitnesses from within the US military" have [...]

UN International Independent Investigation Commission (IIIC) head Serge Brammertz said in a report to the UN Security Council Thursday that the probe into the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri has identified several suspects involved or with insider knowledge of the plot. Brammertz also said that the investigation has obtained information concerning [...]

Jonathan 'Jack' Idema , an American civilian convicted of illegal imprisonment and torture as a rogue vigilante in Afghanistan in 2004, filed a lawsuit against the Associated Press Thursday, alleging that AP defamed, libeled, and slandered him. He also alleged that AP distributed photographs and video provided by Idema or his lawyers without obtaining publishing [...]