A New Orleans judge said Tuesday that criminal trials in New Orleans could resume by March when the courts will try to deal with the 3,000 trials pending before Hurricane Katrina swept through the city. The first post-Katrina grand jury may convene in February to hear the case of some 40 patients who died at [...]

News agencies in Italy reported Tuesday that Italian prosecutors plan to charge a US soldier with murdering Italian secret service agent Nicola Calipari and the attempted murder of an Italian journalist during a shooting at a US checkpoint in Iraq in March 2005. The decision comes after a joint statement released last year indicated that [...]

Switzerland's foreign affairs committee on Tuesday voted against denouncing the United States over purported secret CIA prisons in Europe for terror suspects after members concluded they lacked sufficient evidence. Committee head Luzi Stamm told reporters that current investigations have not yielded any proof the prisons actually exist. The decision seems to contradict a report earlier [...]

Democratic Senator Ben Nelson (NE) on Tuesday became the first in his party to show his support for US Supreme Court nominee Judge Samuel Alito . Nelson, seen as a moderate leader in Congress, said in a press release that his support stemmed from Alito's "impeccable judicial credentials, the American Bar Association's strong recommendation and [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Geoffrey S. Corn, Lt. Col. US Army (Ret.) and former Special Assistant to the Judge Advocate General for Law of War Matters, now a professor at South Texas College of Law, says that US claims of adherence to the "principles" of the Geneva Conventions in the "war on terror" may not mean [...]

Center for Constitutional Rights et al. v. George W. Bush et al., United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, January 17, 2006 . Read the full text of the complaint . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

ACLU v. National Security Agency, United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, January 17, 2006 . Read the full text of the complaint . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

A US District Court judge ruled Tuesday that David Wittig , former CEO of Westar Energy has violated the terms of his release from prison and will be immediately returned to detention. Wittig, who was found guilty on 39 counts of corporate fraud last September, was allowed to postpone his 51-month sentence until his attorneys [...]

The 5-member US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) voted unanimously Tuesday to support an overhaul of its rules governing how executive compensation packages are disclosed to investors, a top priority of Chairman Christopher Cox since he assumed leadership of the regulatory body last August. Read Cox's Tuesday remarks unveiling the proposal. The proposed rules require [...]

Gonzales v. Oregon, Supreme Court of the United States, January 17, 2006 . Read the full text of the opinion. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.