In a Slate article published Wednesday, legal ethicists Stephen Gillers, David Luban and Steven Lubet claim that the White House violated the law when it interviewed Judge John Roberts this spring for the US Supreme Court while he was considering a challenge to US military tribunals in his capacity as a federal appeals court judge. [...]

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe introduced Thursday a highly controversial constitutional reform bill to the Zimbabwean Parliament . The constitutional amendment bill contains proposed changes to the Zimbabwean Constitution that leaders in the MDC Opposition Party have criticized as little more than a naked power grab by Mugabe. The provisions include the reintroduction of the currently [...]

Lawyers representing the family of Brazilian citizen Jean Charles de Menezes, mistakenly killed by police who thought they were pursuing a suspect in the July 21 London bombing , have accused Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair of trying to block an independent inquiry into the shooting. The lawyers said Thursday that Blair wrote to [...]

The National Archives began an investigation Wednesday into the disappearance of a file containing papers authored by US Supreme Court nominee John Roberts on affirmative action. Officials said the file disappeared from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California after two lawyers from the White House and Justice Department reviewed and returned it [...]

Vladimiro Montesinos , a close aide of former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori and Peru's former intelligence chief, went on trial Wednesday on charges that he ordered the massacres of Maoist rebel supporters by paramilitary death squads in the 1990s. Montesinos' past is full of questionable activities, including allegations of election fraud and even forging a [...]

Federal Tort Trials and Verdicts, 2002-03, United States Department of Justice, August 17, 2005 . Excerpt: From 1985 to 2003 the number of tort trials terminated in U.S. district courts declined 79%. Juries decided about 71% of tort trials in 2002-03, while judges adjudicated the remainder. Plaintiffs won in almost half of tort trials, and [...]

David Satterfield, the number-two diplomat at the US Embassy in Baghdad, is allegedly one of the anonymous government officials said to have disclosed classified information to a Department of Defense analyst and two former officials of the pro-Israel lobbying group American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) , who pleaded not guilty earlier this week to [...]

AP is reporting that Ohio Governor Bob Taft will plead no contest to charges that he improperly failed to report golf outings and other gifts. 1:22 PM ET – Taft was fined $4,000 but will not serve any jail time as part of a plea agreement. When entering his plea, Taft said that he took [...]

There has been an almost 80 percent decrease in the number of federal tort trials from 1985 to 2003, the US Department of Justice said in a report released Wednesday. According to Federal Tort Trials and Verdicts, 2002-03 , the decrease can be attributed to the growing use of alternative dispute resolution and the increased [...]

Police in Bangladesh have detained almost 50 people for questioning after a series of over 100 bombs exploded across the country on Wednesday, killing two and injuring over 100. The near-simultaneous bombings took place outside government buildings and court houses in almost every major city in Bangladesh. Police say leaflets from a banned Islamic group, [...]