A vote this week by the Association of Trial Lawyers of America (ATLA) at its annual meeting in Seattle to change its name to the American Association for Justice (AAJ) has drawn derision from critics of trial lawyers and the American litigation process. Incoming president Mike Eidson , a south Florida product liability attorney, said [...]

The top legal advisor to the US Secretary of State assured the UK on Friday that the three British bankers who were extradited to the US in connection with the Enron fraud scandal will receive a fair trial, and that the extradition treaty is fair. In the first official US response to the extradition controversy [...]

Former Liberian President Charles Taylor on Friday made his first court appearance in The Hague since leaving Sierra Leone last month. Taylor's lawyer Karim Khan told the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) , sitting at International Criminal Court (ICC) facilities, that Taylor is unhappy with prison conditions at The Hague, calling conditions at the [...]

Doctors have warned Saddam Hussein that his now two-week-long hunger strike could have adverse health effects, according to a US military spokesman Thursday. Hussein drinks coffee and fortified water, but has refused to eat since July 7. Hussein began the hunger strike in protest of trial court procedures and the killings of three defense lawyers, [...]

Following the death of former Khmer Rouge military leader Ta Mok Thursday, local observers say that with few top Khmer Rouge officials left to be prosecuted before the new Khmer Rouge genocide tribunal scheduled to begin holding trials next year, the process may already be in trouble. Former head of state Khieu Samphan and Foreign [...]

Americans for a Republican Majority (ARMPAC) , a political committee set up by former House Majority leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) , has agreed to shut down and pay a fine for improperly reporting financial activity. ARMPAC agreed to the $115,000 penalty, imposed by the US Federal Election Commission , late Wednesday after an FEC audit [...]

Virginia executed a man Thursday night using the electric chair, the first execution by electrocution in the country in over two years. Brandon Wayne Hedrick, convicted of the rape and murder of a 23 year old women in 1998, chose electrocution over lethal injection . Virginia allows death row inmates to choose their method of [...]

JURIST Special Guest Columnist Shayana Kadidal, one of the lead attorneys on the Center for Constitutional Rights' challenge to the NSA domestic surveillance program, says that Senator Arlen Specter's "compromise" bill to bring such challenges within the jurisdiction of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is really no compromise at all… With much fanfare in [...]

JURIST Contributing Editor Mary Ellen O'Connell of Notre Dame Law School says that the principle of proportionality in the use of force is a necessary, sensible and humane doctrine of international law that Israel and Hezbollah would do well to respect in the latest Middle East conflict… A number of world leaders responding to Israel’s [...]

Indian authorities arrested three men Friday in connection with the July 11 Mumbai train bombings that killed over 180 people . The three suspects arrested by authorities – Khaleel Aziz Sheikh, Kamal Ahmed Ansari and Mumtaz Ahmed Chowdhury – are not the same three suspects Indian authorities named last week. Mumbai police, amid speculation that [...]