Lawyers for the US Justice Department on Tuesday urged a federal judge to dismiss Connecticut's lawsuit challenging the No Child Left Behind Act , arguing that the state understood the law's requirements when officials accepted federal education funding and therefore cannot avoid obligations under the law. Connecticut filed the lawsuit in August 2005, alleging that [...]

Israeli police Wednesday forcibly evacuated a West Bank Jewish settlement at Amona and demolished nine houses illegally built on Palestinian land after the Israeli Supreme Court rejected a last-minute appeal by residents. The outpost, along with many others, was set for evacuation under the road map peace plan , which calls for the removal of [...]

Lawyers representing I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby on Tuesday offered details regarding his likely defense to charges that he lied to investigators about his role in exposing the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Libby, the former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, was indicted in the CIA leak case but has pleaded not [...]

After efforts to reach a long-term renewal of the USA Patriot Act stalled again last week, Congress is set to approve another short-term extension of the legislation to allow continued negotiations on the balance between civil liberties and the war on terror. Sixteen key provisions of the Patriot Act were set to expire at the [...]

The Saddam Hussein trial resumed in Baghdad Wednesday with Hussein, four co-defendants, and defense lawyers boycotting the proceedings in protest against the new chief judge. Ra'uf Rasheed Abdel-Rahman was named chief judge after Rizgar Mohammed Amin resigned earlier this month. At the last trial session Sunday, Abdel-Rahman promised stricter courtroom control but the strategy produced [...]

Leading Wednesday's international brief, the Ugandan Constitutional Court has declared that a military court-martial of Ugandan opposition leader Dr. Kizza Besigye is illegal and ordered all charges against the defendant dropped. The court held that the concurrent trials of Besigye in the civilian criminal justice system and in the General Court-Martial (GCM) of the Ugandan [...]

In a report to the UN Security Council Tuesday, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan expressed "serious concern" with the slow progress in implementing eight benchmarks set by the UN for Kosovo , which Annan attributed to the intimidation of judges, corruption and security issues. Annan wrote: Intimidation threatens the rule of law and the justice institutions [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Valerie Vollmar of Willamette University College of Law says that the recent US Supreme Court ruling upholding Oregon’s physician-assisted suicide law is a major step towards ensuring dignified choices to terminally ill Oregonians… On January 17, 2006, the United States Supreme Court issued a 6-to-3 decision in Gonzales v. Oregon upholding Oregon’s [...]

At his annual news conference Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin defended a new Russian law restricting the activities of domestic and foreign-based non-governmental organizations – including a number of international human rights groups – and subjecting them to stringent financial disclosure requirements. The controversial law, signed January 10 but not made public until a week [...]

State of the Union Address, President George W. Bush, January 31, 2006. Read the full text of the Address. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.