The government of the Australian Capital Territory on Tuesday introduced revised legislation that would grant legal recognition to same-sex partnerships but would stop short of authorizing same-sex marriage . ACT Attorney General Simon Corbell introduced the Civil Partnerships Bill 2006 in the district's legislature, saying that the bill was a result of the ACT government's [...]
JURIST Special Guest Columnist Kathleen Duignan, Executive Director of the National Institute of Military Justice, says that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 again puts US JAG officers in the awkward position of litigating the shortfalls of a military legal process that none of us would like to see our own service members tried under, [...]
Saddam Hussein will be immediately executed and possibly buried in secret if his death sentence is approved by the court currently considering his appeal , according to an Iraqi government official speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity Tuesday. Hussein and two of his co-defendants, Awad Hamed al-Bandar and Barzan al-Tikriti, were all convicted and [...]
US District Judge Lawrence Karlton said Monday that the state of California has six months to remedy overcrowding in the state's prison system, which is 70 percent overcapacity with 173,000 total inmates, before he will decide whether to establish a three-member judicial panel to make recommendations to fix the problem. Karlton said he was giving [...]
The US Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Portland has settled child sex abuse lawsuits with about 150 people, court-appointed mediators US District Judge Michael Hogan and Oregon Circuit Judge Lyle Velure announced Monday. They reported that "the vast majority of the known tort claims were settled… the Archdiocese has agreed to pay…the few remaining unresolved known [...]
Outgoing UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Monday urged the US not to abandon "its own ideals and objectives" in the war against terrorism, stressing that "human rights and the rule of law are vital to global security and prosperity." In his last speech as secretary-general, delivered at the Truman Presidential Library in Missouri, Annan also [...]
A federal judge has accepted the prosecution's latest proposal to limit the amount of detail former vice presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby can introduce at trial concerning classified intelligence. In a sealed ruling Monday, US District Judge Reggie Walton tempered an earlier ruling that Libby must be allowed to present certain classified evidence to [...]
An Italian court has set a hearing for January 9 to determine whether to issue indictments for over 30 US and Italian intelligence agents in the alleged kidnapping and extraordinary rendition of Egyptian cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr . Italian prosecutors last week asked a judge to issue indictments for 26 US Central Intelligence Agency [...]
Human Rights Watch urged China Monday to "repeal restrictions on lawyers handling collective disputes and representing protesters." In a new report , HRW slammed rules adopted by the government-controlled All China Lawyers Association in March, which place restrictions on lawyers representing plaintiffs in cases brought by 10 or more people. The Guiding Opinions on Lawyers [...]
The US Supreme Court handed down decisions in two cases Monday, including Carey v. Musladin , where the Court held that a federal appeals court improperly overturned a state court ruling allowing a murder victim's family to wear buttons depicting the victim's face during a criminal trial. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth [...]
