President Bush signed a bill Thursday to reauthorize expiring provisions of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) . The provisions would have lapsed in 2007, but the reauthorization extends them through 2032. "Today, we renew a bill that helped bring a community on the margins into the life of American democracy," Bush said during a signing [...]

The entertainment industry and Sharman Networks announced Thursday that they had reached a settlement regarding Sharman's Kazaa software, which allowed illegal Internet downloads of music and movies . The company agreed to pay "substantial" penalties – $115 million, according to a Los Angeles Times report – and to discourage online piracy by creating roadblocks for [...]

The United Nations may sanction the Philippines if its government continues to refuse to submit reports on human rights abuses in the country, the chairwoman of the Commission on Human Rights Philippines (CHRP) said Thursday. Purificacion Valera Quisumbing said that Manila has not complied with UN requirements to release the reports since 1992, subjecting the [...]

Chief Judge Raouf Abdel Rahman on Thursday ordered proceedings in the Saddam Hussein trial adjourned until October 16, when a verdict against the ousted Iraqi president is expected to be announced. Hussein was not in court Thursday, but his former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan and Awad Hamed al-Bandar , former chief of Hussein's Revolutionary [...]

US Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) Wednesday introduced legislation that would give Congress the power to bring lawsuits in federal court to challenge presidential bill signing statements the constitutionality of which is in question. President Bush has used the signing statements to bypass particular provisions that he considers unconstitutional, even though he has [...]

Both houses of the US Congress passed bills Wednesday that impose investigation guidelines on the Treasury Department's Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) , the panel that approved a Dubai-owned company to manage US ports earlier this year. The Bush administration was criticized for signing off on the transaction without giving adequate [...]

Norwood v. Horney, Ohio Supreme Court, July 26, 2006 . Read the full text of the opinion . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Anderson v. King County, Washington Supreme Court, July 26, 2006 . Excerpt: The two cases before us require us to decide whether the legislature has the power to limit marriage in Washington State to opposite-sex couples. The state constitution and controlling case law compel us to answer "yes," and we therefore reverse the trial courts. [...]

Mexican leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador filed a criminal complaint against the Federal Electoral Institute Tuesday, alleging that it should have blocked campaign ads funded by private companies that he alleges broke election regulations. Obrador has claimed that the commercials contained subliminal messages . Obrador lost the July 2 presidential election by 0.6 [...]

A federal judge in Manhattan ruled Wednesday that statements made by two partners at accountancy firm KPMG cannot be used in their upcoming trial because federal prosecutors coerced the two defendants into cooperating with the ongoing criminal tax shelters case by using excessive financial pressure over the two men. US District Judge Lewis Kaplan also [...]