The US Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear an appeal in Lawrence v. Florida , concerning a challenge to rules surrounding the one-year filing deadline for making habeas corpus claims in federal court. Florida death row inmate Gary Lawrence is questioning whether the deadline is suspended while the Supreme Court reviews his petition for [...]

A UN delegation led by Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs Nicolas Michel arrived in the south African nation of Burundi Monday to help establish a truth and reconciliation commission and war crimes court. According to Michel, the 5-member group will facilitate negotiations between local transition government leaders on the "necessary juridical framework" to establish the commission [...]

Microsoft on Monday appealed a ruling from the South Korean Fair Trade Commission that the company breached antitrust laws by bundling its Windows operating system with Microsoft programs. In the decision handed down in December 2005, the Commission ordered Microsoft to pay $33 million and unbundle its media player and messaging service from its Windows [...]

Zimbabwe government on Monday announced new anti-terrorism laws that would allow the government to outlaw any group it declares to be a "foreign or international terrorist organization." The proposed Suppression of Foreign and International Terrorism Bill comes two weeks after the government arrested 15 members of the opposition party Movement for Democratic Change for possessing [...]

The sentencing trial of Zacarias Moussaoui on Monday enters what analysts expect to be a critical week, with testimony from Moussaoui and other key witnesses. Prosecutors concluded their case for giving Moussaoui the death penalty last Thursday, during which the defense team consistently highlighted failures by the CIA and FBI to investigate Moussaoui after his [...]

A spokesman in Nigeria for former Liberian president Charles Taylor said Monday that his whereabouts are unknown, after Nigeria indicated over the weekend that Liberia could take Taylor into custody to stand trial for war crimes charges . Taylor is wanted in Sierra Leone for charges that he backed rebel leaders in exchange for diamonds [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Margaret Satterthwaite of New York University School of Law says that US actions in the war on terror – especially the practice of extraordinary rendition – make a mockery of formal US insistence on the rule of law, damaging it and ultimately reducing it to nothing… Since 9/11, the U.S. government has [...]

Several hundred people led by Islamic clerics protested in Afghanistan Monday against the suggested release of a man who converted from Islam to Christianity. The religious leaders called for Abdul Rahman to be tried under Islamic sharia law which imposes the death penalty for anyone guilty of apostasy, or "abandonment of the faith." The protests [...]

US District Judge Ivan Lemelle will hold a hearing Monday to hear arguments from civil rights groups that the upcoming April 22 municipal elections in New Orleans should be postponed because many African-American residents have been displaced outside Louisiana due to Hurricane Katrina and will be unable to vote. Lemelle has already dismissed a challenge [...]

US troops in Iraq reportedly arrested more than 40 Iraqi Interior Ministry personnel Sunday after the discovery of a secret bunker complex in central Baghdad holding 17 foreign prisoners. In November 2005, some 170 Sunni detainees were found by Americans at a secret police prison in Baghdad, launching a nationwide investigation into allegations of widespread [...]