Former Communist Chinese leader Zhao Ziyang died Monday at age 85, after suffering a series of strokes. Communist Party hardliners put Zhao under house arrest in 1989 for sympathizing with pro-democracy and human rights activists in Tiananmen Square ; after martial law was declared, the Tiananmen gathering was crushed by the military at a cost [...]

Richard Posner, University of Chicago Law School: "There is a movement afoot, assisted by the strengthening of Republican control over Congress, to impose federal limits on tort litigation, particularly medical malpractice; premiums for malpractice insurance have soared in the last two years and physicians are protesting vigorously. The costs of malpractice premiums are only about [...]

Here's a run-down of law-related events, expected developments and live webcasts on JURIST's docket for Monday, January 17. Today is Martin Luther King Day, a federal holiday in the United States. Federal and state courts are closed in observance. The trial of Naser Oric continues Monday at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. [...]

Newdow v. Bush, United States District Court for the District of Columbia, Judge John Bates, January 14, 2005 . Excerpt: There is a strong argument that, at this late date, the public interest would best be served by allowing the 2005 Inauguration ceremony to proceed on January 20 as planned. That would be consistent with [...]

German lawmakers this weekend proposed that EU justice ministers consider at their next meeting a Europe-wide ban on display of Nazi insignia. The call came in response to outrage after Britain's Prince Harry wore a Nazi swastika armband to a costume party last week. Silvana Koch-Merin , head of Germany's Free Democrats in the European [...]

Iraqis reacting Sunday to Saturday's sentencing of US Army Spc. Charles Graner for abusing Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad were mostly critical of his ten year sentence, five years short of the legal maximum. But while a number suggested that death or even similarly-torturous treatment would have been a more fitting punishment, [...]

The first Kuwaiti to be freed from the US terror suspect detention camp at Guantanamo Bay arrived home in Kuwait Sunday, where he was taken into custody for questioning. Nasser al-Mutairi , a 28-year old former employee of the Kuwait Ministry of Education, was met by family and then held for debriefing. He was captured [...]

The US Sunday released approximately 80 Afghan detainees from custody at Bagram airbase north of Kabul and delivered them to the Afghan Supreme Court, where officials put them on buses home. The detainees were taken in after the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001. The US is currently holding about 500 Afghans at Bagram [...]

Thousands of Russians, many of them pensioners, marched in several major cities Saturday continuing four days week of protests against the Putin government's repeal of a Soviet-era social benefits law and its replacement by a program of minimal monthly payments. Under the old law, formally repealed January 1, some 32 million Russian pensioners, veterans and [...]

A military jury at Fort Hood, Texas, has sentenced Army Spc. Charles Graner Jr. to 10 years in prison for abuses committed at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. Earlier Saturday Graner took the stand in the sentencing phase of his trial, giving an "unsworn statement" immune from cross-examination for some three hours, during which [...]