The US Supreme Court on Monday announced it would hear a second case challenging the constitutionality of the federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 . The court granted certiorari in Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood , a Bush administration appeal from the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco, which [...]

The American Civil Liberties Union confirmed Monday that a lawyer working for the New York attorney general's office informally warned the ACLU executive committee not to adopt proposed standards limiting ACLU board members from publicly speaking about their internal policies. The ACLU board met over the weekend to discuss the proposal, but took no action. [...]

Faheem Khalid Lodhi, a Pakistani-born Australian immigrant, was convicted Monday of plotting a terrorist attack in Australia, marking one of the first convictions under new Australian anti-terrorism laws passed in the wake of 9/11. A New South Wales Supreme Court jury found Lodhi not guilty of downloading aerial maps for the purpose of terrorism after [...]

Italian prosecutors investigating the death of intelligence agent Nicola Calipari have requested the indictment of US Army Specialist Mario Lozano . Investigators concluded their probe last week , after news agencies reported in January that prosecutors intended to charge Lozano with murder. Calipari was shot to death in 2005 while driving to the Baghdad airport [...]

The US Supreme Court handed down three decisions in argued cases Monday, including a ruling in the consolidated cases of Rapanos v. US and Carabell v. Army Corps of Engineers , where a plurality of the Court decided that the Clean Water Act applies only to bodies of water that are "permanent, standing or continuously [...]

The trial of three Egyptian journalists and one lawyer accused of slandering a local election commission chief by alleging fraud in Egypt's November parliamentary election and publishing the names of two judges accused of rigging results in a runoff poll began Sunday. If convicted, they face up to two years in prison. The four defendants [...]

The UN Human Rights Council held its inaugural session Monday, convening for its first session as the replacement body for the beleaguered Human Rights Commission . The Human Rights Council will begin by passing two "vital documents" that will guarantee the rights of indigenous peoples and another that will oppose enforced disappearances. The first Council [...]

The prosecution in the Saddam Hussein trial presented closing arguments Monday, calling for the death penalty for Hussein, his half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti, former chief judge of the Revolutionary Court Awad Hamed al-Bander, and former senior regime member Taha Yassin Ramadan. Chief Judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman , who abruptly ended witness testimony for the defense last week [...]

US District Judge Sim Lake has delayed the sentencing of former Enron executives Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling until October 23. Lake agreed on Friday to a motion filed by the defense team to delay the sentencing, which was originally scheduled for September 11. Lake is still considering a motion made by Skilling's lawyers to [...]

JURIST Special Guest Columnist Jonathan Hafetz, Associate Counsel with the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, says that the recent suicides of three prisoners at Guantanamo Bay graphically represent and reinforce America's loss of moral legitimacy in its so-called "war on terror" … The only surprise about the three recent [...]