A New Jersey appellate court Tuesday ruled against seven same-sex couples who had argued that they were entitled to marry under the state constitution . The court ruling upheld a lower court decision that had concluded that state legislators must first change marriage laws in New Jersey before same-sex marriages would be allowed. AP has [...]

Financial filings released Tuesday show that Bill and Hillary Clinton have finally paid off the legal bills incurred during Whitewater and the impeachment scandal. Lucrative book contracts and numerous speaking arrangements helped settle their debt, the result of assembling a costly legal defense team that was built up during the six years an independent counsel [...]

A US federal court judge Tuesday renewed for a fouth time a restraining order prohibiting former UN Oil-for Food Independent Committee Inquiry investigator Robert Parton from releasing confidential documents to the two US congressional committees that had subpoenaed the documents . Parton took the boxes of documents after resigning from the inquiry committee in April [...]

Leading Tuesday's international brief, the Argentine Supreme Court has struck down the nation's two amnesty laws preventing former military and government officials from being investigated and prosecuted for alleged crimes and human rights abuses during the 1970s and '80s military dictatorship and the anti-leftist campaign called the Dirty War . By a 7-1 margin with [...]

A Romanian court Tuesday freed the militant leader of the Mineworkers Confederation of Romania, a man who led the 1991 miners' riot that overthrew Romania's first post-communist government. Miron Cozma had served seven years of his eighteen year jail sentence when former President Ion Iliescu granted him a pardon last December, which he retracted two [...]

The chairman of the Kyrgyzstan Supreme Court said Tuesday that the court was getting back to work on Tuesday after a month of disruptions cause by protests and occupation of their courthouse in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek. Supporters of defeated political candidates from elections earlier in the year had occupied the building to demonstrate against [...]

The US Senate Tuesday confirmed former Senate Legal Counsel Thomas Griffith to the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia by a vote of 73-24 . President Bush had originally chosen Miguel Estrada for the seat, but the Senate Democrats had objected to his nomination and he eventually withdrew . Griffith was [...]

Ten Kuwaiti legislators signed a request Tuesday to put Sunday's appointment of Massouma al-Mubarak as the first female Cabinet minister in Kuwait up for debate in parliament, claiming it to be unconstitutional . The move comes a month after Kuwait granted women the right to vote and run for office . The legislators claim that [...]

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour, formerly a justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, said Monday in an interview that the Canadian high court will likely have to revisit a 2002 deportation ruling that may conflict with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights , banning the deportation of suspects to [...]

After a referendum to liberalize Italy's fertility laws failed on Monday, church leaders and Italian politicians are sending some conflicting signals about the legal future of abortion in the country, which legalized abortion in 1978 and strongly supported choice in a 1981 referendum. Cardinal Camillo Ruini, chairman of the Italian bishops' conference which encouraged Catholic [...]