The new Canadian Conservative Party government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper tabled its Federal Accountability Act in the House of Commons on Tuesday. The sweeping legislation and the accompanying action plan , promised by the Conservatives during the winter federal election campaign, aims for more government transparency, targets corruption, and seeks to end "undue influence" [...]
Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney signed a ground-breaking healthcare bill into law Wednesday, under which almost all residents, including the state's 550,000 uninsured, are required to obtain healthcare coverage. Romney also used his line-item veto power , however, to override eight portions of the bill, most notably a controversial provision which would levy a $295 per [...]
United States v. Libby, United States District Court for the District of Columbia, April 12, 2006 . Read the full text of the brief . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in a 2002 memorandum of understanding with three federal agencies agreed to reclassify approximately 10,000 public intelligence documents, taking them out of the public view. NARA made the agreement available Monday, naming two of the three agencies that were party to the agreement – the Central Intelligence Agency [...]
The UK Court of Appeal on Wednesday upheld a lower court decision holding that Australian terror suspect David Hicks should be granted British citizenship, dismissing an appeal from Britain's Home Office . Hicks has been held at the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay since 2002 for allegedly supporting Taliban troops in Afghanistan. Hicks, who [...]
Iraqi High Criminal Court chief judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman , who is presiding over the trial of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein , said Wednesday that Hussein and one of his co-defendants, Hussein's half-brother and former Baath official Barzan Ibrahim , have refused to submit handwriting samples to the court so they could be analyzed by [...]
Leading Wednesday's international brief, the UK Court of Appeal has overturned a lower tribunal's decision to block the removal of failed asylum applicants to Zimbabwe where human rights agencies and NGOs allege that they face torture and inhumane treatment at the hands of Zimbabwe's security forces. The appellate decision held that UK Asylum and Immigration [...]
In a joint statement issued late Tuesday, US Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) and House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) said they would reexamine two provisions of a contentious immigration bill passed by the House of Representatives last year "to produce a strong border security bill that will not make unlawful presence in the United [...]
In the wake of a request from the UN-supported Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) that the trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor be transferred for security reasons, members of the UN Security Council said Tuesday that they were having difficulty finding a country willing to take in Taylor after a verdict is reached. [...]
Lawyers for the US government on Tuesday urged a federal appeals court panel to remove District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth from a case involving the alleged mismanagement of American Indian money by the US Department of the Interior to "restore the appearance of fairness." Peter Keisler, an assistant attorney general from the Justice Department, [...]
