Ahead of key Senate Judiciary Committee hearings Tuesday on whether Congress should extend the USA PATRIOT Act , the Justice Department has released new data suggesting that some of the extraordinary powers accorded it under the Act have been used sparingly. For instance, according to the DOJ, section 213 warrants – allowing federal agents, with [...]

Pursuant to a Security Council resolution passed Thursday, the International Criminal Court has received several boxes of evidence on alleged war crimes in Sudan's Darfur region collected by the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur while assessing the situation in Darfur earlier this year. Chief ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo is due to meet with UN [...]

At least 3,797 people were executed in 2004 and at least 7,395 people in 64 countries were sentenced to death last year, according to the annual report on the use of capital punishment released by Amnesty International Tuesday. In The death penalty worldwide: developments in 2004 , Amnesty reports that the number of executions, which [...]

Here's a run-down of law-related events, expected developments and live webcasts on JURIST's docket for Tuesday, April 5. The US Senate convenes at 9:45 AM ET today. Watch a live webcast of the session. The Senate Judiciary Committee is holding an oversight hearing on the USA Patriot Act at 9:30 AM ET. Watch a live [...]

Knight v. Superior Court of Sacramento County, Court of Appeal of the State of California, Third Appellate District, April 5, 2005 . Excerpt: the plain and unambiguous language of Proposition 22 shows that the initiative was intended only to limit the status of marriage to heterosexual couples and to prevent the recognition in California of [...]

Johnson v. United States, Supreme Court of the United States, April 4, 2005 . Excerpt from the Opinion by Justice Souter: Although Johnson knew that his conviction subjected him to the career offender enhancement, he failed to attack the predicate for enhancement by filing his state habeas petition until February 1998, more than three years [...]

Rousey v. Jacoway, Supreme Court of the United States, April 4, 2005 can be exempted from a bankruptcy estate, allowing bankruptcy filers to retain their IRAs rather than forcing them to divide the assets among their creditors]. Read the full text of the opinion here . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Federal prosecutors argued Monday that it would be in the public interest for former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay to face trial this summer – no later than June – on bank fraud charges. The government cited Lay's repeated assurances that he is prepared to stand trial and hopes for a speedy resolution to his legal [...]

California's Third District Court of Appeal Monday rejected a challenge to the state's domestic partnership law granting same-sex partners a body of rights almost identical to those enjoyed by the state's married couples, including automatic parental status and responsibility for each others debts. The suit, brought by the Alliance Defense Fund and other conservative groups, [...]

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has confirmed that prisoners at Camp Bucca , a US-run detention camp in southern Iraq, rioted on April 1 despite an initial US military denial of any incident. An ICRC delegation was at the camp conducting a regular prisoner visit the day of the riot. The Red [...]