The Federal Election Commission said Wednesday that it will not appeal a ruling ordering it to either present a "reasoned explanation" for its case-by-case treatment of campaign contribution issues involving tax-exempt 527 groups , or to institute new rules "if necessary." The FEC voted 4-2 to explain how the FEC deals with 527 groups, which [...]

Umer Hayat, who was accused of lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about his son's terrorism-related activities, pleaded guilty Wednesday to a lesser charge of trying to smuggle $28,000 in cash into Pakistan three years ago. Umer, who will not serve any more prison time after spending nearly a year in custody, would have [...]

The Jordanian government said Wednesday that it intends to introduce a bill in parliament that will eliminate prison sentences for journalism-related crimes, just one day after a court sentenced two newspaper editors to two months in jail for "attacking religious sentiment" by reprinting cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad . The journalists were arrested in February [...]

The Iraqi High Tribunal (IHT) – formerly known as the Iraqi Special Tribunal – has issued two arrest warrants for former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz for crimes against humanity, according to Aziz's Italy-based lawyers. Aziz is already in custody, but Giovanni Di Stefano says that he has received a letter from US Ambassador [...]

The probe charged with finding out why top US military officials did not know about the alleged killings of 24 Iraqis by US Marines in Haditha in November 2005 until February 2006 has uncovered two major failures in how the incident was handled, the Washington Post reported Thursday. According to an anonymous military official, the [...]

The United States has again suspended $7 million government-to-government aid to Serbia for failing to turn over Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic . This is the fourth year in a row that the US suspended some aid to Serbia's government for not handing over war crimes suspects to the International Criminal Tribunal for [...]

The New York Court of Appeals , the state's highest court, heard oral arguments Wednesday on whether the court should overturn the state's 97-year old statute defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman. On appeal from four consolidated cases – Hernandez v. Robles , Samuels v. New York State Department of [...]

JURIST Contributing Editor Peter Shane of Moritz College of Law, Ohio State University, says that the Bush Administration's apparent lack of respect for norms of constitutional governance is more troubling than any breaches of technical law in either the NSA domestic surveillance program or the more recent FBI search of Rep. William Jefferson's congressional office… [...]

The Orleans Parish Criminal District Court building in New Orleans officially reopens Thursday morning, and the first criminal trials since Hurricane Katrina struck at the end of August are scheduled to start on Monday. According to Chief Judge Calvin Johnson, the court will be able to hear 12 or fewer cases a day in the [...]

The Prosecutor v. Charles Taylor, Appeals Chamber, Special Court for Sierra Leone, May 29, 2006 . Read the full text of the decision . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.