David J. Bershad , former name partner at leading class action law firm Milberg Weiss , pleaded guilty Monday to conspiracy to obstruct justice in a plot in which Milberg Weiss allegedly paid up to $11.3 million in illegal kickbacks since 1984 to individuals to serve as lead plaintiffs in class action and shareholder derivative [...]

The court-martial of US Marine Corps Cpl. Trent D. Thomas for his alleged role in the 2006 kidnapping and murder of an Iraqi civilian in Hamdania began Monday, with the prosecutor asking jurors to convict Thomas on charges of premeditated murder and kidnapping. Defense lawyers, who asserted that "Marines in combat don't challenge orders," argued [...]

EU Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security Franco Frattini told the European Parliament Monday that protections afforded under the US Privacy Act will extend to European Union citizens as a part of a new airline passenger data-sharing agreement between the US and EU. Frattini, hoping to ease concerns from EU parliament members that the new [...]

The Thai Supreme Court agreed to hear corruption charges against former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra Tuesday, scheduling the first hearing for August 14 and ordering the exiled Thaksin and his wife Pojamarn to appear before the court. Thaksin is charged with abuse of power for personal gain, conflict of interest violations, and also dereliction of [...]

Zheng Xiaoyu, former commissioner of China's State Food and Drug Administration was executed Tuesday, as the Supreme People's Court denied Zheng's appeal for leniency. The court sanctioned Zheng's execution, saying that Zheng's acceptance of $850,000 in bribes and his serious dereliction of duty as a high-level official warranted the harsh penalty as it had a [...]

Eric Linge, Pitt Law '09, files from Mumbai: The directives and writs of PILs and the hearings of PILs in court are regular news in India today. The PIL movement was begun by the Supreme Court in 1978. The '70s were a troubled time in the history of India, but the judiciary emerged from this [...]

German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said it was imperative not to underplay the gravity of terrorist threats and raised the possibility of "targeted killings" of terror suspects like Osama Bin Laden and the indefinite detention of others in a controversial interview with Der Spiegel magazine published Monday. Pointing to similar United States policy, he noted [...]

Former Alaska state Representative Tom Anderson was convicted Monday on seven counts of bribery and corruption by an Anchorage federal jury. Anderson, a Republican, was accused of accepting nearly $26,000 he believed to be from private correctional facilities firm Cornell Industries, Inc. in exchange for Anderson's influence on then-pending measures on halfway houses. The deal [...]

Iranian police arrested twenty people near the Iraqi border on suspicion of participating in an international spy ring, according to state news agency IRNA Monday. The arrests come several months after the Iranian government first accused four Iranian-Americans of belonging to a US-organized spy network. The latest sweep included some foreigners, but so far specific [...]

Eric Linge, Pitt law '09, files from Mumbai: The Indian Supreme Court has made itself into possibly the most powerful apex court in the world. As addressed in "India: Judicially Independent," below on this page, the Indian Supreme Court held in Kesavanand Bharati v. Kerala that the Court can strike down any constitutional amendment that [...]