A Dutch appeals court Monday overturned the conviction of Dutch businessman Guus Kouwenhoven for violating a UN embargo against the government of former Liberian President Charles Taylor . In 2006, a lower court convicted Kouwenhoven of violating the embargo, but acquitted him of war crimes, ruling that he did not have direct knowledge of the [...]

A German lawmaker has launched a challenge to the new EU reform treaty , properly known as the Treaty of Lisbon , asking that Germany's Federal Constitutional Court rule on whether it is legal, according to Monday media reports. A lawyer for Peter Gauweiler of the Christian Social Union told German news magazine Focus that [...]

Registry officials at the International Criminal Court (ICC) met Monday with a delegation of Uganda's rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) to discuss procedural matters regarding the prosecution of several LRA leaders. The ICC said that the meeting was only to discuss procedural issues : As a neutral organ that facilitates fair trial, the Registry does [...]

The US House Judiciary Committee filed a lawsuit Monday to enforce subpoenas seeking information from former White House legal counsel Harriet Miers and White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten regarding the US Attorneys firing scandal . Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) said Monday: It is extremely rare that Congress must litigate in order [...]

A Mauritanian detainee held at Guantanamo Bay has threatened to sue US officials, alleging that he has been tortured in US custody. Lawyers for Mohamed Ould Sillahi told Reuters Monday that Sillahi was also tortured by officials in Jordan and Mauritania , whom he is also threatening to sue, after his arrest in 2001 and [...]

Chinese prosecutors increased the number of corruption convictions against government officials by 30 percent in the past five years, according to a Monday report by Chinese Procurator-General Jia Chunwang at the First Session of the 11th National People's Congress. Jia, who has headed the Supreme People's Procuratorate since 2003, said that prosecutors investigated 209,487 and [...]

A court in the Philippines acquitted Imelda Marcos and two co-defendants of 32 counts of illegal fund transfers Monday, ending a 17-year criminal trial in which prosecutors accused the widow of former President Ferdinand E. Marcos of illegally transferring up to $863 million to Swiss bank accounts. Marcos, who is accused along with her husband [...]

Thai prosecutors formally filed new corruption charges Monday against former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and other high-level officials, accusing Thaksin and the officials of illegally approving and operating funds from the state lottery. The military-appointed Assets Examination Committee has frozen nearly $2 billion of Thaksin's assets and is seeking up to $500 million in [...]

The US Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have launched a criminal investigation into troubled mortgage lender Countrywide Financial , according to a New York Times report Sunday. Federal authorities are investigating whether Countrywide criminally misrepresented its financial condition. The FBI is also cooperating with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Douglas NeJaime of UCLA School of Law says that in the California marriage case the state's lawyers are attempting a difficult balancing act between an increasingly institutionalized pro-gay perspective held by those at the highest level of state government and the state’s own marriage restriction, itself a remnant of ideas that have [...]