The Constitutional Court of Thailand , the country's highest court, decided Thursday not to hear a petition to impeach Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra , ruling 8-6 that the petition did not clearly state how the Prime Minister was personally involved in a deal where his family sold its controlling stake in telecommunications giant Shin Corporation [...]

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has sent a letter to Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) seeking to dissuade the committee from calling former Attorney General John Ashcroft and Deputy Attorney General James Comey to testify before the panel, saying their testimony would provide no new information on the NSA warrantless surveillance program. The [...]

The UK Daily Telegraph has said that it will drop any further appeals in its legal battle with British MP George Galloway . In January, the Telegraph lost its appeal when a British appeals court upheld a lower court order requiring the newspaper to pay damages and legal costs to Galloway. The court found that [...]

Jordan Paust : "Vice President Cheney has stated that he has the "power" to declassify classified material, but did he exercise that power before granting others the power to leak classified information? Richard Nixon learned that the power to terminate an Executive regulation or order is not the same as the right to violate a [...]

US District Judge Henry Kennedy on Thursday ordered the US Department of Justice to respond to a FOIA request filed by the Electronic Information Privacy Center (EPIC) and produce documents related to the Bush administration's domestic surveillance program . Among the documents lawyers for EPIC requested were the guidelines used by government officials to decide [...]

British legal experts and politicians are bracing for a major confrontation between the upper and lower houses of Parliament when the Terrorism Bill comes before the House of Lords again on February 28 after Wednesday's Commons reinstatement of a "glorification of terrorism" offense that was first nixed in the Lords in late January. Members of [...]

The United States has dismissed as a "discredit to the UN" a report released Thursday by UN special rapporteurs making up the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention of the UN Commission on Human Rights calling on the US to immediately close its detention facility at Guantanamo Bay , saying that UN investigators did not fully [...]

US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales repeatedly stressed his personal and institutional commitment to the protection of civil rights in a speech to Justice Department staff Wednesday setting out the Department's priorities for the coming year. First on his formal list was the fight against terrorism, followed by initiatives on violent crime, drug trafficking, cyber crime, [...]

Newmont Mining Corporation agreed on Thursday to settle a civil suit brought by Indonesia for $30 million, ending one of two significant legal battles between the two parties. The settlement comes after Indonesia decided it would not appeal the ruling that dismissed the $133 million suit brought against Newmont alleging that the company polluted the [...]

The Australian Parliament ended a de facto ban on the so-called "abortion drug" RU-486 (also known as Mifepristone) on Thursday by removing the need for approval by the Health Minister to use the drug. Tony Abbott , a strong anti-abortionist, had refused all applications for its use. Last week, the Australian Senate voted 45-28 to [...]