The Israeli Foreign Ministry said Monday that weekend statements by visiting United Nations relief coordinator Jan Egeland that damage caused by Israeli airstrikes in Beirut was excessive and in violation of international humanitarian law conflicted with those of other UN bodies. Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor rejected what he called Egeland's "very harsh terms" [...]

Jordan is a "central hub in a global complex of secret detention centers" allegedly operated by the US Central Intelligence Agency and foreign intelligence agencies, according to an Amnesty International report written by Malcolm Smart, the director of Amnesty's Middle East and North Africa unit. The report identifies at least 10 suspected cases of alleged [...]

US House of Representatives Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) told Fox News Sunday over the weekend that he might challenge a July 10 federal court order allowing the FBI to view documents seized in the congressional office raid of Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) in May. Chief Judge Thomas Hogan ruled earlier this month that the FBI [...]

US Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT) promised Sunday that US United Nations Ambassador John Bolton would face a difficult fight in his upcoming Senate confirmation hearing. Last summer, President Bush bypassed the Senate confirmation process and appointed Bolton during the Senate's summer recess , despite Senate Democrat opposition that had stalled debate on Bolton's confirmation . [...]

The Saddam Hussein trial resumed in Baghdad on Monday, though the former Iraqi leader was not in court due to his weekend hospitalization after collapsing in jail on the sixteenth day of his hunger strike protesting trial court procedures and a lack of adequate security for defense lawyers. Defense closing arguments were scheduled to continue [...]

An American Bar Association Task Force on Presidential Signing Statements and the Separation of Powers Doctrine has determined that President Bush's practice of attaching signing statements to new laws "undermine the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers." In a report and recommendations to be released Monday, the task force found [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Lynn Wardle of J. Reuben Clark School of Law at Brigham Young University says that the 2006 House and Senate votes on the Federal Marriage Protection Amendment may not have been sufficient to send the amendment to the states for ratification, but they do show that the movement to protect marriage as [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Anthony D'Amato of Northwestern University School of Law, a former defense counsel for war crimes suspects, says that both Hezbollah and Israel are guilty of committing war crimes in the latest Middle East conflict… The laws of war are divided into two categories that I often get mixed up because of the [...]

JURIST Special Guest Columnists Gaby El Hakim and Joe Karam, Lebanese lawyers and board members of the Beirut Bar Association, say indiscriminate Israeli attacks on Lebanese civilians violate all principles of international humanitarian law and call for an immediate ceasefire and concerted negotiations to end the violence and restore a fully-sovereign Lebanon… In the past [...]

Andrew Wood : "With the Khmer Rouge tribunal beginning in less than a year, Phnom Penh is buzzing in anticipation of the proceedings. Preparation for the tribunal has been nearly a decade in the making. Although Pol Pot died in 1999, several other former Khmer Rouge leaders are expected to be indicted and held responsible [...]