The US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals withdrew class action status Tuesday from Enron shareholders who filed a shareholder derivative lawsuit in October 2001. US District Judge Melinda Harmon certified the class in June 2006, but defendants Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse Group appealed to the Fifth Circuit, alleging the certification should be thrown out [...]

The US Senate voted Tuesday to limit the power of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to name interim US attorneys, passing the Preserving United States Attorney Independence Act of 2007 by a vote of 94-2 . The vote came amid increasing pressure on Gonzales to resign after the recent firings of eight federal prosecutors, which have [...]

One of Pakistan's three deputy attorneys general resigned Tuesday, telling Reuters that the crisis over President Pervez Musharraf's March 9 suspension of Chief Justice Iktikhar Chaudhry for unspecified "misconduct" had made it "very difficult for me to perform my duties." The move by Nasir Saeed Sheikh follows the resignation of seven Pakistani judges earlier this [...]

A US military jury recommended Monday that 101st Airborne Staff Sgt. Raymond Girouard be sentenced to 10 years in prison after being convicted last week of three counts of negligent homicide for the deaths of three Iraqi detainees held after a May 2006 raid in Thar Thar. He was also found guilty of one count [...]

The interim government of Bangladesh said Tuesday it plans to set up a national human rights commission in the country to deal with human rights problems there. Human rights groups have recently complained about extra-judicial killings and arbitrary arrests by the security forces in Bangladesh. There have been 50 unexplained deaths in the country since [...]

The US Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that parties can contractually allocate the burden of attorneys' fees when litigation involves issues of federal bankruptcy law. In Travelers Casualty v. Pacific Gas & Electric Co. , Travelers sought to recover attorneys' fees according to its indemnification agreements with PG&E, but the lower courts did not allow recovery [...]

A former CIA director is recommending in a report to a group of international civic leaders that the United States enact an EU-style cap-and-trade program and other measures to control greenhouse gas emissions . The background paper by John Deutch , who led the CIA in the mid-'90s and now teaches in the chemistry department [...]

The hanging of Saddam-era Iraqi vice-president Taha Ramadan before dawn Baghdad time Tuesday drew a disavowal from the United States and condemnation from Russia as the international community reacted to an execution that UN officials and rights groups had lobbied intensively against. Bloomberg News quoted a US Embassy spokesman in Baghdad as saying that the [...]

The US Senate Monday considered the possibility of taking away the authority of US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to unilaterally appoint replacement US Attorneys as comments from the White House regarding his future seemed less than confident and the administration reportedly began considering possible replacements. Nearly 3,000 email messages released Monday by the US Department [...]

JURIST Special Guest Columnist Faisal Kutty, a Toronto lawyer and vice-chair and counsel to the Canadian Council on American Islamic Relations, says that Canada does not need a US-style "no-fly list" with all its limitations and potential abuses, but rather better investigative and intelligence efforts to counter real threats to public safety… As the Canadian [...]