US Senate Judiciary Committee ranking Democrat Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) announced during a speech at the Georgetown University Law Center Thursday that he intends to vote against the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, citing Alito's expansive views on presidential power. "Based on his record, I'm concerned that Judge Alito will not be [...]

Carla Del Ponte Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) said Thursday that former Serbian general and indicted war criminal Ratko Mladic is still being shielded from authorities by the Serbian army he once commanded, and has not fled to Russia as alleged in a Wednesday Moscow Times report . [...]

The US military said Thursday that the number of detainees participating in hunger strikes at Guantanamo Bay had reached its lowest point since October 2005, but offered no reasons for the dropoff. The number of hunger strikes has dropped from as many as 131 to only 22 prisoners with 17 of those receiving nourishment via [...]

The Iraqi High Criminal Court (IHCC) (formerly the Iraqi Special Tribunal ) confirmed Thursday that Sayeed al-Hamashi, who was selected to preside over the Saddam Hussein trial on Monday, will retain his position despite allegations that he belonged to the banned Baath party . Ali Faisal, executive manager of Iraq's Debaathification Commission , said Wednesday [...]

The Human Rights Watch annual report released Wednesday alleges an increasing amount of human rights abuses in Iraq, including torture of detainees and attacks on civilians, and assigns some of the blame to the US and its military. The report finds a deteriorating situation in Iraq partly due to US leadership in the country: Counterinsurgency [...]

The European Parliament announced on Wednesday that it would investigate claims that the CIA has been illegally detaining and torturing terrorism suspects in European countries or using European air bases as transit points to send suspects to other countries to be tortured, a process called extraordinary rendition . The 46-member temporary committee will have wide [...]

In the final run-up to next Monday's Canadian federal election that is expected to bring his Conservative Party to power after 13 years in the political wilderness, leader Stephen Harper has backpedaled after suggesting that a Conservative government could not have a "true majority" because the Canadian courts would still be staffed by judges appointed [...]

Memo on rendition and extraordinary rendition, UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, December 2005 . Read the full text of the memo . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

The European Court of Justice ruled on Thursday that Germany may not apply restrictions to workers from outside the European Union sent to Germany by European companies. The German law, passed last year, required such workers to have worked for their company for at least one year before coming to Germany. It was aimed at [...]

The non-partisan Congressional Research Service , the public-policy research arm of the Library of Congress , called the Bush administration's limited briefings on the NSA domestic spying program "inconsistent with the law" in a report released to the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday. The report, requested by committee member Jane Harman (D-CA) , says that [...]