The Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq (IECI) announced Monday that it would disregard 227 ballot boxes from the December 15 parliamentary elections in response to 58 serious complaints of election fraud . Since Iraqis voted at about 6,200 voting centers across the country with an average of 5 ballot boxes each, the 227 boxes to [...]

A replacement judge has been named to preside over the Iraqi High Criminal Court ] trying ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein following the weekend resignation of chief judge Rizgar Amin , according to the court's chief prosecutor speaking Monday. Amin deputy Sayeed al-Hamashi will take over the next session of the Hussein trial scheduled for [...]

The European Commission is urging the 25 European Union member states to implement compatible criminal law procedures in the wake of a study showing drastically different legal practices. While the study conducted by the University of Maastricht did not reveal any violations of the European Human Rights Convention , it highlighted the fact that EU [...]

Under pressure from the United States, the Israeli Cabinet led by Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has decided to allow Palestinians to vote in Jerusalem during the January 25 Palestinian parliamentary elections so long as militant groups are not on the ballot. Israel had threatened to bar the residents of east Jerusalem from voting locally [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Benjamin Davis of the University of Toledo College of Law says that the memory and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) calls us from complacency and careerism to act against injustice and help the poor and the oppressed, both in this country and abroad… I thank JURIST for this opportunity [...]

US Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) Sunday promised a thorough congressional probe into President Bush's domestic surveillance program . Specter denied that the President was given a "blank check" to conduct any kind of domestic spying, but downplayed the possibility of impeachment over the issue as "the president is making a good [...]

US Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) warned Sunday against any filibuster by Democrats to stall the vote for US Supreme Court nominee Judge Samuel Alito . Feinstein plans to vote against Alito but said "this might be a man I disagree with, but it doesn't mean he shouldn't be on the court." [...]

President Bush's "faith-based initiative" to get taxpayer funding to religious organizations to provide social services suffered a setback Friday when a three-judge panel of the US Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated a 2004 lawsuit brought by the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) on the grounds that the program may violate the constitutional separation of [...]

The government of British Prime Minister Tony Blair will in a few weeks lift a longstanding ban on wiretapping the phones of members of parliament as part of a push to expand the surveillance powers of Britain's MI5 security service in the wake of the July 2005 London bombings , according to the Independent on [...]

Iraqi officials are attempting to persuade the chief judge in the Saddam Hussein trial to remain in his position, according to prosecutors speaking Sunday. A tribunal official confirmed Saturday that Kurdish judge Rizgar Amin had officially filed his resignation in protest over Shiite leaders' objections to how he was running the trial. Commentators say Amin's [...]