Iraq's former deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz received a ten-minute telephone call in jail from his family Thursday, his first such contact in over two years, and will see them in person next week, his lawyer Badia Aref said. Aziz said through Aref earlier this week that he would not testify against former dictator Saddam [...]

The US First Circuit Court of Appeals held Thursday that the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) , which updated the Wiretap Act to include electronic communications, should be broadly interpreted to allow an e-mail provider alleged to have read correspondence in transit to customers to be tried on federal charges. The federal government filed suit [...]

Lord Charles Falconer , Secretary of State and Lord Chancellor in Tony Blair’s Labour government, said Friday in an interview with BBC Radio that judges could be given explicit legislative guidance on how to interpret the UK's Human Rights Act in order to guarantee that efforts to deport foreign nationals considered a threat to national [...]

As anticipated Thursday in JURIST's Paper Chase, the National Archives has released a set of memos written by US Supreme Court nominee John Roberts while he was a Justice Department aide in 1981. In drafting answers to potential questions for Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Roberts described his [...]

Former Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein could be put to death after his first trial if he is convicted for his alleged role in a 1982 Shiite massacre in Dujail, an anonymous official close to the trial said Thursday. In June, Hussein reportedly turned down an earlier deal offered by the US to avoid the death [...]

Leading Thursday's corporations and securities law brief, former HVB Group executive Domenick DeGiorgio has pleaded guilty to fraud and tax evasion for his role in creating and selling illegal tax shelters for HVB and its customers. Though auditing firm KPMG was not named in the trial, the firm is under criminal investigation for the tax [...]

Lobbyist Jack Abramoff , once a close friend of US House Majority Leader Tom DeLay , was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury on bank fraud charges. The charges are related to a 2000 purchase by Abramoff and his partners of SunCruz Casinos and an alleged phony wire transfer that defrauded two lenders financing [...]

Leading Thursday's states brief, the Oregon Supreme Court has denied a timber company state compensation after the company was barred from logging trees around a bald eagle's nest by ruling today that state wildlife regulation of private property in the form of barring logging does not amount to a taking. Furthermore, the court found that [...]

The Environmental Protection Agency will soon release federal standards regulating how data from toxic pesticide studies on humans can be used, but politicians and some medical experts are claiming that children and pregnant women involved in the studies may be at risk. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility , who received an early copy of the [...]

A court in Switzerland ruled Thursday that the arrest of former Russian Energy Minister Yevgeny Adamov complied with the law. A source at the Russian embassy in Bern said both the US and Russian requests for Adamov's extradition were also found to be legal. Adamov, formerly in charge of the Russian Federal Atomic Energy Agency [...]