The US Supreme Court on Wednesday approved Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 32.1 , which permits attorneys to cite unpublished opinions in the federal circuit courts. The new rule does not dictate the precedential value that circuits can assign to unpublished opinions, but attorneys will always be allowed to cite them to the courts. Currently, [...]

The Forum for the Establishment of a War Crimes Court in Liberia has increased lobbying efforts to convince national leaders that Liberia needs to set up its own war crimes court in response to the controversy surrounding the trial of former president Charles Taylor , who faces trial in the UN-supported Special Court for Sierra [...]

A British court on Wednesday held that procedures undertaken to restrain a suspected terrorist under the UK's Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) breached the suspect's human rights. Although the court did not say that it was illegal for UK Home Office Secretary Charles Clarke to authorize control orders for terror suspects, the High Court judge [...]

Italian Justice Minister Roberto Castelli said Wednesday that the Italian government would not validate Milan prosecutor Armando Spataro's request to extradite from the United States 22 CIA agents allegedly responsible for the 2003 kidnapping and extraordinary rendition of Egyptian cleric Moustafa Hassan Nasr . Castelli, who denounced the pressure from Spataro to forward the extradition [...]

Jurors in the sentencing trial of Zacarias Moussaoui on Wednesday heard the cockpit audio recording of the moments before United Airlines Flight 93 slammed into a Pennsylvania field on September 11, as federal prosecutors rested their case that Moussaoui should receive the death penalty for his role in the attacks. At the close of the [...]

Chinese dissident Li Jianping went on trial Wednesday in China's Shandong province, facing charges of "incitement to subvert state power" for allegedly posting pro-democracy articles on the Internet. According to Human Rights in China , he was arrested in May 2005 for posting essays on the Internet promoting a greater democracy in China. Prosecutors also [...]

Federal prosecutors have decided to drop its appeal in a case where the government sought to maintain a gag order to conceal the identity of a library that was subject to FBI demands for library patron records under the USA PATRIOT Act . The American Civil Liberties Union last year filed a lawsuit on behalf [...]

Nepalese riot police shot and killed a pro-democracy protester and arrested twenty-nine journalists and five human rights activists on Wednesday in the seventh straight day of pro-democracy demonstrations aimed at ending the direct rule government of King Gyanendra . The shooting in Nawalparasi, a town 200 km west of Kathmandu, was only the fourth death [...]

The International Court of Justice celebrated its 60th anniversary Wednesday, holding a solemn sitting at the Hague. The ICJ is the highest legal body in the United Nations and has served as a judicial intermediary between member states since the end of World War II. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and General Assembly President Jan Eliasson [...]

The new Canadian Conservative Party government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper tabled its Federal Accountability Act in the House of Commons on Tuesday. The sweeping legislation and the accompanying action plan , promised by the Conservatives during the winter federal election campaign, aims for more government transparency, targets corruption, and seeks to end "undue influence" [...]