Tadao Maruko v Versorgungsanstalt der deutschen Bühnen, European Court of Justice, April 1, 2008 . Read the full text of the judgment. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Kevin P. Martin : "In Faretta v. California, 422 U.S. 806 (1975), the Supreme Court held that the Sixth Amendment provides a constitutional right to a criminal defendant to decline the assistance of counsel and instead to represent himself. The Court explained that a defendant's decision to invoke this right should be honored even in [...]

Triantafyllos Tafas v. Jon W. Dudas, US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, April 1, 2008 . Read the full text of the memorandum opinion . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

US senators Jack Reed (D-RI) and Christopher Dodd (D-CT) have asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate the enforcement division of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) after learning that the number of fines ordered by the SEC dropped by more than half from fiscal year 2006 to 2007, Reed said Tuesday. The GAO [...]

The lower house of the Polish parliament voted 384-56 Tuesday to approve the EU reform treaty , formally known as the Treaty of Lisbon . The upper house is expected to ratify the treaty Wednesday. Poland had raised numerous objections to the pact during negotiations, many having to do with the proposed Council of Europe [...]

The US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on Tuesday rejected new US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) rules that would have retroactively limited the number of claims that can be included in a patent application and the number of times a continuation application can be filed for a given invention. The court [...]

The Bush administration plans to invoke legal waivers to push through completion of 267 miles of fencing along the US-Mexico border by the end of this year, federal officials said Tuesday according to AP. The waivers, authorized under Title I sec. 102 of the Real ID Act , would allow the government to circumvent over [...]

A US Department of Defense official pleaded guilty Monday in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia to one count of conspiracy for disclosing national defense information. Gregg William Bergersen, an analyst at the DOD's Defense Security Cooperation Agency , who was charged and arrested in February, is accused of providing [...]

The European Court of Justice Tuesday ruled that a person in a same-sex partnership has the right to collect their partner's pension benefits after that partner's death. The ruling came in the case of a man who was in a registered same-sex partnership in Germany. According to the court's press release : As regards the [...]

Egyptian security forces Tuesday arrested five members of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood as they were posting campaign fliers on behalf of Muslim Brotherhood candidates slated to run in local council elections scheduled for April 8. Tuesday's arrests add to the over 800 Muslim Brotherhood members already in custody, including 148 council election candidates. On Sunday, [...]