The US Supreme Court handed down decisions in two cases Wednesday, including New York Board of Elections v. Torres , where the Court upheld New York's procedure for selecting state trial judges. In New York, judicial candidates are selected through nominations at political conventions rather than through primaries, a process which was found unconstitutional by [...]

Additional charges, including attempted murder, were filed Tuesday against the alleged plotters of an attack on Fort Dix . The US Attorney for New Jersey declined to say why the attempted murder charge was added, but a grand jury found that there was sufficient evidence to allow the charges. In addition, the indictment accuses the [...]

US District Judge Henry Kennedy ruled Tuesday that the Libyan government and six Libyan officials should pay more than $6 billion in damages to families of seven Americans who died in the 1989 bombing of French passenger jet UTA Flight 772 , which killed all 170 people on board. Kennedy ruled last year in Pugh [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Abigail Salisbury of the Mekelle University Law Faculty in Mek'ele, Ethiopia, says that although the vast majority of Ethiopians publicly denounce H.R. 2003, the so-called Ethiopia Democracy and Accountability Act now going through Congress that links nonessential US assistance to fulfillment of various human rights obligations, the spirit of the bill is [...]

US House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) sent a letter Tuesday to Attorney General Michael Mukasey urging him to appoint a special counsel to investigate allegations that the US Central Intelligence Agency ordered the destruction of videotapes showing the interrogation of terror suspects . In the letter, Conyers wrote that: Justice Department regulations [...]

Bringing criminal charges against Blackwater employees for the September 16 killings of 14 Iraqi civilians in West Baghdad would require surmounting numerous legal hurdles, US Department of Justice officials told Congress during a private meeting in December, the New York Times reported Wednesday. The meeting, which was held after a US federal grand jury opened [...]

Ross Ray QC : "David Hicks may have been released from prison on 29 December, but he is not a free man. Although it has not been alleged, let alone proven, that Hicks has committed any offence under Australian law, he is now subject to an interim control order issued under the Commonwealth Criminal Code. [...]

Stoneridge Investment Partners, LLC v. Scientific Atlanta et al., US Supreme Court, January 15, 2008 . Read the full text of the opinion . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Michael Simpson : "In a major victory for students, parents, and public education, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held on January 7th that the Bush Administration's interpretation of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) violates the federal Constitution. The court's ruling came in an NEA-sponsored lawsuit filed in 2005 on [...]

US District Judge Marcia Cooke Tuesday refused to rule out the possibility of a life sentence for convicted terrorism conspirator Jose Padilla . Cooke found that the enhanced terrorism penalties could be applied, rejecting the defense's argument that evidence linking Padilla and his co-conspirators to actual terrorist groups was insufficient for federal terrorism standards to [...]