Iraqi authorities Monday began the delicate process of lifting the curfew imposed in Baghdad and two other provinces over the weekend in anticipation of possible violence following Sunday's announcement of the Dujail trial verdict against ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein . Civilians are now allowed to go into the streets, but a traffic ban in [...]

Judicial independence has been threatened by legislative and executive branches of government across the country, former US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor told a group of 800 judges, lawyers, and others at the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference Friday. On Tuesday, South Dakota voters will vote on a referendum known as the "Jail 4 Judges" [...]

Iraq, Haiti, Guinea, and Myanmar rank as the world's most corrupt nations in 2006 according to the latest annual Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index released Monday. The report shows a strong link between poverty and corruption as perceived by experts, with nearly three-fourths of the 163 ranked countries scoring below a five, the score that [...]

Former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra is prepared to return to Thailand to answer to possible corruption charges, Thaksin's lawyer said Monday, though Thailand has struggled to find evidence of Thaksin's alleged corruption following September's bloodless military coup . Coup leaders have maintained that Thaksin was overthrown in part due to his involvement in corrupt [...]

South Korean cloning scientist Hwang Woo-Suk has filed a lawsuit seeking reinstatement to his former position as a university professor, arguing that he should not have been fired in response to fraud, embezzlement, and bioethics charges connected to his claims to have produced stem cell lines by cloning human embryos. Hwang is on trial for [...]

A business associate of former South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma lost his appeal Monday on corruption charges before the highest appeals court in South Africa, leaving Zuma's name tarnished as a potential presidential candidate. Businessman Schabir Shaik was accused of paying Zuma for political favors, and on appeal , the South African Supreme Court [...]

JURIST Special Guest Columnist Curtis Doebbler, an American member of Saddam Hussein's legal defense team and a professor of law at An-Najah National University on the Palestinian West Bank, says that the Dujail trial was one of the worst abuses of justice in modern history, a classic instance of "victor's injustice" imposed on the heels [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Chibli Mallat, visiting professor at Princeton University and a prominent Middle East human rights lawyer who in 2003 turned down an invitation to join the Iraqi Special Tribunal that would judge Saddam Hussein, says that even given the chaos of the Dujail trial it is not too late to save the rule [...]

Statistics indicate that the US Justice Department has declined to prosecute 87 percent of all terrorism case referrals from the FBI in fiscal year 2006, according to new findings released by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) . The numbers, obtained by TRAC from the Executive Office for US Attorneys , show that while [...]

Iraqi High Tribunal officials said Sunday following the handing down of death sentences to Saddam Hussein and two others in the Dujail crimes against humanity case that they would file complaints against several defense lawyers for alleged misconduct. Chief prosecutor Jaafar Moussawai told a news conference that complaints would be filed against members of the [...]