JURIST Guest Columnists Victor Hansen and Lawrence Friedman of New England School of Law say that if Vice President Dick Cheney is permitted to avoid the requirements of the Presidential Records Act, the door is left open for a future administration to create a shadow government within the executive branch, one that operates without the [...]
The Finnish Interior Ministry on Wednesday announced that it is drafting new gun control legislation in response to the fatal shootings of 10 people at a vocational school in the Finnish city of Kauhajoki. Interior Minister Anne Holmlund said the amendments to the Firearms Act of 1998 , to be presented to the Finnish Parliament [...]
A judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on Tuesday entered a not guilty plea and ordered a psychiatric evaluation in the trial of Aafia Siddiqui , a Pakistani woman with alleged ties to al Qaeda. Siddiqui was charged in August with assault and the attempted murder of a [...]
Prosecutors in the case of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic filed a motion to amend his indictment in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on Tuesday, as was planned earlier this month. The indictment in question was issued in 2000, and contains 11 charges against Karadzic, including genocide, murder, persecution, deportation [...]
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is currently investigating Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, and AIG along with 22 other financial institutions for possible mortgage fraud , US media outlets reported Tuesday. The investigations follow a market collapse that led to a Bush administration proposal circulated over the weekend that would authorize the Treasury Department [...]
US Marine Col. Ralph Kohlmann , chief judge of US military commissions , said Tuesday at a pretrial hearing for five suspects in the September 11 attacks that he is scheduled to retire next April. During voir dire, in which defense attorneys questioned Kohlmann about potential bias, the judge said he had submitted retirement paperwork [...]
Serbia submitted a draft resolution to the UN General Assembly Tuesday seeking an International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory opinion on the legality of the unilaterally-proclaimed independence of Kosovo . The draft resolution was presented following an address to the General Assembly by Serbian President Boris Tadic . The draft resolution and Tadic's address follow [...]
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) on Tuesday announced that it would not post criminal prosecutors at the polls for the November 4 presidential election, responding to concerns raised by civil rights groups. The decision represents a departure from the DOJ's longstanding practice. Grace Chung Becker , assistant attorney general for the DOJ's Civil Rights [...]
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) will amend proposed investigation guidelines to comport with the concerns of Congress and civil liberties groups, according to testimony by Assistant Attorney General Elisebeth Cook given Tuesday before the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence . The proposed rules, referred to as the Attorney General Guidelines, are intended to [...]
An en-banc panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Monday clarified the test to be used to determine whether a design patent has been infringed. The issue came before the court in a dispute over an alleged infringement of US Design Patent No. 467,389 , a design for a four-sided [...]
