UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday appointed US lawyer Brenda Hollis as the prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) . Hollis was appointed in consultation with the government of Sierra Leone, and the appointment was effective as of February 16. Prior to her appointment, Hollis was leading the prosecution against former Liberian [...]

US Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday praised the role of the civilian criminal justice system in obtaining a guilty plea from suspected terrorist Najibullah Zazi. Zazi pleaded guilty on Monday to three criminal charges of conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction in the US and to commit murder in a foreign country, as [...]

Reconciliation in Liberia hinges on the development of its national security and its legal institutions, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon emphasized in a new progress report released Monday. The UN report recognizes that the final report of the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and its recommendations have proven to be deeply divisive, with "he public [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Bruce Aronson of Creighton University School of Law says that Japanese automobile manufacturer Toyota's current safety crisis – now the subject of Congressional hearings – should prompt the company to address its seriously flawed system of governance more than just its public image…. The next phase in Toyota’s crisis will be the [...]

Suspected terrorist Najibullah Zazi pleaded guilty Monday to three criminal charges of conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction in the US and to commit murder in a foreign country, as well as providing material support for al Qaeda. At Monday's hearing in the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York , [...]

The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Monday in two cases. In Astrue v. Ratliff , the court heard arguments on whether an award of attorneys' fees and expenses under the Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA) is payable to the prevailing party rather than to the party's attorneys so that is can be used [...]

UK Justice Minister Jack Straw announced Monday that the government plans to terminate to the inmate early release program initiated in June 2007 to ease prison overcrowding . In remarks before the House of Commons , Straw indicated that inmates eligible for release under the End of Custody Licence (ECL) scheme on or before March [...]

A judge in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on Monday accepted a $150 million dollar settlement agreement between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Bank of America (BOA) . In his ruling, Judge Jed Rakoff said he was "reluctantly agreeing" to the settlement, which he called "improved, but [...]

Two human rights groups released documents Monday confirming that planes associated with the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) extraordinary rendition program landed in Poland on six occasions in 2003. The Open Society Justice Initiative and the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights released flight records obtained through a freedom of information act request to the Polish [...]

Brock N. Meeks : "Recently, tens of millions of Google Gmail users woke up to find the company had automatically placed them in a membership queue for its new social networking tool called "Buzz." No one had a say in whether or not to turn Buzz on because Google had already "turned it on" for [...]