The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) announced Wednesday that three former Croatian generals will begin their war crimes trial at The Hague in May. Ante Gotovina , Ivan Cermak and Mladen Markac have all pleaded not guilty to crimes against humanity and war crimes in connection with the killing of Croatian Serb [...]
European Commission investigators have again asked EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes to formally charge computer chip maker Intel with antitrust violations, according to a Wall Street Journal report Wednesday. In October, investigators first announced that they had gathered enough evidence to prosecute Intel on antitrust charges, and brought their information to Kroes, but an internal [...]
Ben Davis : "Charles 'Cully' Stimson has had a hard week. On January 11, 2007 he made shocking comments on the pro bono lawyers who are working on behalf of Gitmo detainees, calling for corporate CEOs to blacklist the firms at which these lawyers work. As we all saw, an uproar ensued and today he [...]
The Bush Administration will from now on submit all domestic surveillance requests to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) for review and approval under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, according to a letter sent Wednesday by US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The letter explained that the a member [...]
A US military judge ruled Tuesday that 1st Lt. Ehren Watada , a US Army officer who refused deployment to Iraq because he felt the war is 'unlawful,' cannot argue that point in his upcoming court-martial. Lt. Col. John Head further ruled that Watada may not raise a free speech defense, as soldiers do not [...]
The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in Smith v. Texas , 05-11304, where the court must decide whether the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals was correct to apply a "daunting standard of harm ('egregious harm')" in correcting the constitutional violation found by the Supreme Court in an earlier decision in the same case. [...]
Former Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan will be sentenced to death at a hearing before the Iraqi High Tribunal now scheduled for January 25, according to a court spokesperson speaking to the press on Tuesday. Ramadan was convicted in November in connection with crimes against humanity committed in the town of Dujail in 1982. [...]
The US Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that an alien convicted for aiding and abetting a theft offense can be deported under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) . In Gonzales v. Duenas-Alvarez , Luis Alexander Duenas-Alvarez, a legal permanent resident, pleaded guilty to the unlawful driving or taking of a vehicle in violation of California [...]
German Chancellor Angela Merkel told the European Parliament at a session in Strasbourg Wednesday that EU member nations should ratify the European constitution before the next round of European Parliament elections scheduled for June 2009, saying "failure would be a historic mistake." Merkel emphasized the advantages of the proposed constitution, including the clear demarcation of [...]
US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales used the occasion of a Wednesday speech to the conservative American Enterprise Institute on the perils of judicial activism to suggest that judges are not the appropriate agents to rule on national security issues, and that they should otherwise exercise extreme caution when declaring executive and legislative action as unconstitutional. [...]