The US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled Monday that a 17-year sentence was not enough for Jose Padilla , convicted on terrorism-related charges. Padilla and co-defendants Adham Hassoun and Kifah Jayyousi had appealed their convictions, and federal prosecutors appealed the sentence given by US district court judge Marcia Cooke. Upholding all three [...]

Voters in Liechtenstein on Sunday rejected a proposal to legalize abortion in the country after Hereditary Prince Alois of Liechtenstein , the acting Head of State, expressed displeasure with the law and threatened to veto the proposed change. The referendum, entitled Help Instead of Punishment, would have decriminalized abortion in the first 12 weeks of [...]

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on Friday sentenced a man for contempt of court for refusing to testify. The man, Shefqet Kabashi, was sentenced to two months in jail for refusing on two occasions to answer questions during the 2007 trial related to the 1998-1999 war in Kosovo . Kabashi pleaded [...]

Gil Auslander, St. John’s University School of Law Class of 2012, is the author of the fourth article in a ten part series from the staffers of the Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development under the direction of Professor Leonard Baynes. He writes on pre-conviction DNA collection in the UK and US… The early [...]

Seven states, including California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington, on Friday joined an antitrust lawsuit initiated by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) attempting to block a proposed $39 billion acquisition of cellular carrier T-Mobile USA by Telecom giant AT&T . The lawsuit, filed by the DOJ in August , cites the [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Steven D. Schwinn of the John Marshall Law School in Chicago says that the Eleventh Circuit ignored the text, history and jurisprudence of the Constitution in its recent health care ruling, which will likely not be adopted by the Supreme Court given recent rulings on congressional Commerce Clause authority… Some will go [...]

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Saturday criticized the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) for ruling in favor of presidential hopeful Leopoldo Lopez, thereby allowing him to run for office. A Venezuelan anti-corruption official had barred Lopez from running for office after conducting a corruption investigation in 2005. Chavez called the IACHR ruling politically motivated [...]

An Egyptian court on Sunday convicted Zohair Garanah, the former tourism minister under the Hosni Mubarak regime, on corruption charges. As a result of the guilty verdict, the court sentenced him to three years in prison . The conviction of Garanah, a businessman before joining Mubarak’s cabinet, closely followed that of Ahmed Ezz, who was [...]

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Thursday that the national rate of violent crime decreased by 13 percent during 2010. The announcement stemmed from statistics in the annual National Crime Victimization Survey , which consists of self-reported information and is complied by the Bureau of Justice Statistics to estimate the rates and level of [...]

US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on Thursday ordered a stay of execution for Duane Buck, a convicted murderer in Texas, pending a determination on whether to grant certiorari in the case. Buck’s appeal is not arguing his innocence, but rather improper practices during his sentencing hearing. A clinical psychiatrist testified that Buck, a black [...]