The US Senate Judiciary Committee issued formal subpoenas to the White House, the Vice President's Office, the Department of Justice, and the National Security Council Wednesday, seeking documents related to the warrantless domestic surveillance program . Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said the subpoenas were necessary because: Over the past 18 months, [...]

The Louisiana State Legislature Tuesday approved a ban on dilation and extraction (D&X) abortions , establishing fines between $10,000 and $100,000 and a jail term from one to ten years for any physician who performs the procedure when it is not necessary to save the life of the mother. The D&X abortion procedure is often [...]

Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2006, US Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics, June 27, 2007 . Read the full text of the report . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

The Council of Europe (COE) Wednesday called on member states to act with greater transparency and exercise greater oversight of military and foreign intelligence services, giving support to a report delivered earlier this month that accused Poland and Romania of assisting the US Central Intelligence Agency in operating secret prisons for terror suspects. The report, [...]

The US Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics announced Wednesday that the US prison and jail population, already the largest in the world, increased by 2.8 percent to reach over 2.2 million prisoners in 2006 . The findings, released in the DOJ's annual Prison and Jail Inmates report , represent the largest increase in [...]

Adelphia Communications founder John Rigas and his son Timothy were ordered Wednesday to begin serving their prison sentences on August 13th; the two men have been free on bail since their 2004 convictions as they appealed their case. Judge Leonard Sand of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York said that [...]

Pakistani government lawyer Malik Muhammad Qayyum told reporters Tuesday that he supports giving suspended Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry a public trial, saying that the government should respect Chaudhry's desire that the proceedings be open to public access. Government lawyers have previously opposed a public trial, preferring the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) try Chaudhry behind [...]

US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman Christopher Cox defended the SEC's record from Democratic and Republican criticism before the US House Financial Services Committee Tuesday, testifying that the SEC should not be perceived as being either pro or anti-business, but rather as a partnership with businesses to ensure that companies remember the interests of [...]

The European Commission (EC) reported Wednesday that new EU members Bulgaria and Romania need to do more to achieve judicial reform, fight corruption and organized crime . A report on Bulgaria's progress in adhering to EU norms noted its passage of constitutional amendments relating to the judiciary as a positive step that met EU benchmarks [...]

The Seoul Administrative Court granted asylum Tuesday to a Chinese dissident who exposed allegations of human organ trading, overturning a ruling by the Ministry of Justice that denied asylum to the dissident and his family. The dissident, who is a member of the banned Chinese Democratic Party and has been in South Korea since 2003, [...]