A French court Thursday sentenced 10 Islamic militants for up to ten years each in prison for their roles in a failed plot to detonate a bomb in a Strasbourg market on New Year's Eve 2000. All the men (including one said to be an associate of Osam bin Laden) were Algerian or Franco-Algerian; four [...]

Speaking at a White House economic forum Wednesday, President Bush called on the new Congress to pass what he called "meaningful liability reform" on asbestos, on class action, and medical liability by curbing lawsuits in these areas which said had inhibited economic and job growth:…the cost of frivolous lawsuits, in some cases, make it prohibitively [...]

Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, now held by the US for over a year at a facility outside Baghdad and due to be tried for war crimes, had his first meeting with members of his Jordanian-based legal defense team Thursday. A meeting last week had been scheduled and then quickly canceled for unknown reasons; on [...]

The chief accountant of the Securities and Exchange Commission revealed Wednesday that giant mortgage lender Fannie Mae, which finances the purchase of one out of every five homes in the US, violated accounting rules in respect of its handling of derivatives and some loan-related transactions between 2001 and 2004. Read the SEC release here. Fannie [...]

A Pentagon spokeperson said Wednesday that 130 US troops from various branches of the service have been charged or punished by the military in connection with the abuse of prisoners at facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay. More than 100 are from the Army, responsible for detentions in the two combat theaters – of [...]

In the landmark ruling Thursday, an extraordinary nine-judge panel of the UK House of Lords, Britain's highest court, held that the indefinite detention of foreign terror suspects without charge by the British government was contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights, incorporated into domestic law by the UK Human Rights Act. Reversing a Court [...]

Rossello-Gonzales et. al v. Puerto Rico Election Commission et al., US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, December 15, 2004 . Excerpt: A case may be removed to federal court if it presents a "claim or right arising under the Constitution, treaties or laws of the United States." 28 U.S.C. § 1441(b). "The Supreme [...]

The US First Circuit Court of Appeals sitting in Boston ruled Wednesday that the Puerto Rico Supreme Court, not the local US District Court in San Juan, should rule on a case concerning disputed ballots in the territory's November gubernatorial election. The ruling makes it likely that the winner will be pro-status quo Popular Democratic [...]

In a banner day in telecommunications regulation, the Federal Communications Commission Wednesday voted to lessen the strictness of regulations requiring major telephone carriers to lease lines to competitors at federally-mandated rates, and to facilitate wireless Internet access for airplane travellers, but declined to apply indecency standard to satellite radio broadcasters. Under the new phone line [...]

Case Concerning Legality of the Use of Force (Serbia and Montenegro v. United Kingdom), International Court of Justice, December 15, 2004 . Read the judgment of the court here. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.