The Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) has set April 2 as the tentative trial date for former Liberian President Charles Taylor . Justice Julia Sebutinde announced the date Friday during a pretrial hearing in The Hague, expressing concern that Taylor be tried without "undue delay." Taylor has been in UN custody since shortly after [...]
Ben Davis : "There's an old adage in the military that goes "different spanks for different ranks" (see James W. Smith III, "A Few Good Scapegoats: The Abu Ghraib Courts-Martial and the Failure of the Military Justice System", 27 Whittier Law Review 671, 677, 693 (2006)): persons at lower levels in the military receive more [...]
A prosecutor told a British court-martial Thursday that senior UK military officers should be held responsible for the abuse of Iraqi detainees in UK custody because they failed to develop adequate checking procedures on junior personnel. Colonel Jorge Mendonca, Major Michael Peebles, and Warrant Officer Mark Davies are among seven British soldiers being court-martialed on [...]
Thailand's king has voiced his support for Tuesday's coup that brought General Sonthi Boonyaratglin to power, according to an announcement on Thai state-run television on Friday. Although the leaders of the new "Council of Administrative Reform" claimed to have the king's backing on Wednesday, the TV statement was the first public endorsement of the new [...]
French President Jacques Chirac on Friday reaffirmed his confidence in the judiciary after meeting with top members of the French judiciary who have asked Chirac to rein in French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy for his accusations that the Paris courts are too lenient on criminals. Sarkozy, who is seen as Chirac's probable successor to the [...]
US Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) cannot serve concurrently as both a senator and a military judge because it violates the US Constitution's separation of powers requirement, the US Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces has ruled . The court on Wednesday upheld a lower court ruling , and wrote that "one of the purposes [...]
The US Senate Judiciary Committee approved the OPEN Government Act Thursday, a bill that would punish federal agencies that fail to respond to requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in a timely manner. The bill would give federal agencies 20 days to determine whether to comply with the FOIA request for records and [...]
Agreement upon Common Article 3, September 21, 2006 . Read the full text of the agreement . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here. See also the Agreement on Classified Information .
JURIST Guest Columnist Jordan Paust of the University of Houston Law Center says that the "compromise" between senior Republican lawmakers and the White House on the terms of military commission legislation governing detainee interrogation and trial provides US interrogators with inadequate guidance and leaves them – and their would-be protectors – legally unsafe… Congressional adoption [...]
Two San Francisco Chronicle reporters will be jailed if they continue to refuse to identify the person who leaked secret grand jury testimony from Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi and other athletes, regarding an investigation into the now-defunct Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO) , a federal judge said Thursday. Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada published a [...]
