US Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyers on Tuesday filed a challenge to a federal judge's decision to stay the execution of convicted murder suspect US Army private Ronald Gray. Judge Richard Rogers for the US District Court for the District of Kansas last week ordered the stay of the execution, which had been scheduled for [...]

The International Criminal Court (ICC) on Tuesday temporarily postponed proceedings against former Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba because another member of the pre-trial chamber was granted a leave of absence due to "grave family circumstances." The absence of a member of the chamber left an insufficient number of judges on the [...]

The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in two cases. In Philip Morris USA v. Williams , the Court considered for a third time a $79.5 million punitive damages verdict against Philip Morris USA . The Court previously ruled that the punitive damages award based "in part on desire to punish the defendant for [...]

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled unanimously Tuesday that Finland violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights – the "right to respect for private and family life" – in a case involving a minor targeted by pedophiles. In K.U. v. Finland (application no. 2872/02), the court found that Finnish authorities [...]

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield, Massachusetts announced Tuesday that it has settled 59 sexual abuse claims against the church through voluntary arbitration. The total amount for the settlements was $4.5 million with individual awards ranging from $5,000 to $200,000 for incidents of abuse from 1948 to 1986. Springfield bishop Timothy McDonnell said of the [...]

The Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) banning the use of most such weapons was opened for signature Wednesday at a conference in Oslo, Norway. More than 100 countries adopted the convention in May at a meeting in Dublin, Ireland. Several major users of cluster munitions, including the US, Russia, and China, have not adopted the [...]

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday proposed that Russian courts become more transparent in order to restore faith in the justice system and prevent people from turning to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) . Speaking at the seventh All-Russian Congress of Judges, Medvedev said that the ECHR cannot and should not replace Russian [...]

A federal judge on Tuesday ruled that her 2006 decision invalidating a 2005 Bush administration rule that would allow road construction and mining in national forests applies only to 10 western states. The original Roadless Area Conservation Rule , implemented by former US President Bill Clinton in 2001, was replaced by the Bush administration with [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Douglas NeJaime of UCLA School of Law says that in the wake of California voters' endorsement of Proposition 8, amending the state Constitution to restrict the definition of marriage to a union between a man and a woman, the battle for gay rights may now shift to other states and focus on [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled Tuesday that a suspected Osama bin Laden associate, imprisoned for 32 years after stabbing a prison guard while in custody, may be resentenced according to heightened standards for acts of terrorism. Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, a Sudanese national, was in custody in 2000 awaiting charges related [...]