Brian J. Foley : "If U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema throws out the government's bid to have the death penalty imposed on confessed al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, as a result of apparent misconduct by government lawyers in the sentencing hearing, she will be doing the government — and rest of us — a giant favor. [...]

Google goes to federal court on Tuesday – backed by online privacy advocate groups – to fight a Bush administration subpoena that seeks to force the search engine giant to hand over an enormous amount of its user data, including one week's worth of query searches and up to 1 million web addresses. US Attorney [...]

Serbian President Boris Tadic Monday blamed the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia for the unexpected death of Slobodan Milosevic on Saturday, telling the Associated Press that the court should have granted the prisoner's requests to be released to Moscow for treatment of heart problems. The court denied the requests for fear that Milosevic [...]

French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said that despite widespread protests he remains committed to a proposed labor law that will make it easier for companies to fire workers under the age of 26. Villepin said in a national TV interview Sunday that the new law will create incentives for firms to hire young people [...]

US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Monday announced the creation of a new National Security Division at the Department of Justice, bringing "under one umbrella the Department's primary national security elements" as authorized by the recent renewal of the Patriot Act . The division is designed to bridge the gap between the law enforcement and intelligence [...]

A US Vietnam-era deserter is being held at a military prison in California after being arrested late last week while crossing the border from Canada. Allen Abney, 56, deserted the US Marine Corps and fled to Canada in 1968 at the age of 18. He was arrested Thursday after a routine computer check conducted upon [...]

A military court-martial is set to begin Monday for US Army dog handler Sgt. Michael J. Smith, facing 14 counts of misconduct for using unmuzzled dogs to abuse detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in 2003 and 2004. Military prosecutors contend that Smith was operating outside of protocol when he allowed the unmuzzled animals to bark [...]

US District Judge Leonie Brinkema stunned courtroom observers Monday by calling a recess in the September 11 hijacking trial of Zacarias Moussaoui Monday after being informed that government lawyers had coached witnesses in the case. The government informed the court and defense over the weekend that a Transportion Security Administration attorney had improperly coached four [...]

Nigerian lawyers have begun a two-day boycott of the country's courts in protest at what they say is "failure of the government to comply with court orders and the violation of human rights." Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) President Lanke Odogiyon says that disregard for the rule of law in Nigeria is reminiscent of the country's [...]

Turkey has urged European countries to reexamine their religious defamation laws and ensure that they protect Muslims in the wake of the Muhammad cartoons controversy . At a weekend conference of EU foreign ministers in Austria, Turkish foreign minister Abdullah Gul echoed Muslim claims that European laws reflect a double standard insofar as they protect [...]