Australian Prime Minister John Howard said Monday he will not be forced into weakening the government's tough new anti-terrorism measures . The draft legislation, leaked onto the Internet last Friday by the concerned Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory, has been severely criticized by many who believe it erodes civil liberties and free speech, [...]

UK Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer said Sunday that although he agreed with the Government's position that extended periods of custody in detaining terror suspects were needed, detainments must be monitored by a judge. Speaking on BBC television's Sunday AM, Falconer said that a judge overseeing the process on a regular basis would make sure that [...]

JURIST Contributing Editor William G. Ross of Cumberland Law School, Samford University, says that while the nomination of Harriet Miers to the US Supreme Court is not without its problems, the selection of close presidential associates for the high court is an historical commonplace, and several criticisms of Miers' background and education are artificial and [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist William Banks of Syracuse University College of Law says that President Bush's proposal after Hurricane Katrina to change the federal Posse Comitatus law to allow a greater military role in the event of natural disasters may not be a good idea from a cultural or military perspective, and may not even be [...]

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi honored the country's war dead by praying at Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine Monday, despite conflicting court decisions on the constitutionality of Koizumi's visits to the shrine. Last month, the Osaka High Court ruled that the visits violate constitutional provisions for the separation of church and state, but earlier this month, the [...]

US Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers will offer her first rebuttal to concerns over her qualifications Monday in answers to a Senate questionnaire on several topics, including judicial activism. White House strategists say that Miers' approach will be to reassure conservative critics while at the same time not drawing fire from the liberal opposition. Miers [...]

An official from Bali's Denpasar district court said Monday that politicians and legal officials will be sent to the prison which houses three men convicted in the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings in an attempt to speed up their executions. In 2003, Amrozi bin Nurhasyim, Mukhlas and Imam Samudra were sentenced to death by firing squad [...]

The Egyptian government ordered Sunday that five members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood be released after they had been detained for five months without charges. The Muslim Brotherhood, established in 1928 and banned in 1954, renounced violence in the 1970s and is thought to be Egypt's largest Islamist group. The order comes after the recent [...]

The Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal (formerly known as the Iraqi Special Tribunal ), the court established to try Saddam Hussein and other former Iraqi officials, could violate international standards for fair trials, according to a briefing paper, The Former Iraqi Government on Trial , released Sunday by Human Rights Watch . HRW warns that the [...]

A British Royal Air Force medical officer has become the first member of the UK military to face criminal charges for disobeying a lawful command because he refused to fight in Iraq, claiming the war there is illegal. Flight-Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall-Smith, decorated from operations in Afghanistan and two previous tours in Iraq, will be court-martialed [...]