A military court in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has found thirteen soldiers guilty of murdering 30 civilians in the Ituri district . The thirteen were sentenced Monday to life in prison, according to UN sources. Witnesses said the soldiers abducted the civilians and forced them to perform labor; in November of last [...]

The prime ministers of Spain and Italy have pledged to support Germany in reviving the European Constitution . Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi , whose countries both ratified the Constitution, made the announcement Tuesday after an annual summit on the island of Ibiza. In 2005, the constitution [...]

The Sacramento County Superior Court Tuesday struck down a plan by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to transfer prisoners to private out-of-state facilities in order to reduce prison overcrowding. The ruling by Judge Gail Ohanesian held that an emergency declaration issued by Schwarzenegger in October violated the California Emergency Services Act and the state constitution , [...]

Lawyers made their final arguments in the perjury trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Tuesday, with the defense arguing that Libby was a scapegoat for presidential aide Karl Rove's disclosures. In its final remarks, the prosecution argued that Libby was merely trying to a cover up a potentially illegal intelligence leak. In response, the defense [...]

The French parliament voted Monday to amend the French Constitution to include an explicit ban on the death penalty. In a special joint session of both the National Assembly and the Senate at the Palace of Versailles, the amendment passed with a vote of 828-26 . While the death penalty has been outlawed in France [...]

Federal investigators and prosecutors fudged data on the number of anti-terrorism investigations and cases for the four years after 9/11, according to an audit by US Department of Justice Inspector General Glenn A. Fine released Tuesday. In a report on terrorism-related incidents and case-loads, the inspector general found that "some of these statistics were significantly [...]

The US Supreme Court agreed to hear two cases Tuesday, including one dealing with the procedure the state of New York employs to choose trial judges. In NY Board of Elections v. Torres, state election officials join both the Democratic and Republican parties in an appeal of a Second Circuit decision that the current process [...]

Lawyers for the Australian government argued that control orders do not violate the country's constitution during a Tuesday court hearing in the case of an Australian man convicted in February 2006 of receiving money from an al Qaeda associate. Joseph Terrence "Jihad Jack" Thomas successfully appealed the conviction in August 2006, but the Australian government [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit ruled Tuesday that provisions in the Military Commissions Act stripping foreign nationals held as "enemy combatants" of the right to file habeas corpus petitions challenging their detentions do not violate the Suspension Clause of the US Constitution. The ruling came in the consolidated cases of hundreds [...]

The US Supreme Court handed down decisions in three cases Tuesday, including Philip Morris USA v. Williams , where the Court overturned a $79.5 million punitive damages verdict against Philip Morris USA . The Oregon Supreme Court last year upheld a jury award of nearly $80 million in punitive damages against the company because it [...]