The FBI issued a total of 9,254 National Security Letters (NSLs) in 2005 related to 3,501 US citizens and legal residents, according to a new US Department of Justice report. The NSLs allow the executive branch to gather information about individuals suspected in terrorism or espionage cases from banks, credit card, telephone and Internet companies [...]

Nepalese lawmakers pressing for wide-ranging changes to the country's constitution called Saturday for King Gyanendra to give up control of the army to put out of his reach a key instrument he used to assume direct control of the country in February 2005 when he effectively deposed the civilian government of then-Prime Minister Sher Bahadur [...]

Lester Crawford , the embattled former head of the US Food and Drug Administration who stepped down in September 2005 after only three months in office in the midst of a furor over the agency's refusal to authorize over-the-counter distribution of Plan B emergency contraceptives , is under criminal investigation by a grand jury for [...]

The British lawyer serving as chief prosecutor for the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone , the West African war crimes court that will try recently-captured ex-Liberian president Charles Taylor for war crimes and crimes against humanity, announced Friday he would step down June 30 when his contract expires after only a year in the [...]

The US Department of Justice says it will ask a federal judge to dismiss a class-action suit launched in January by the Electronic Frontier Foundation , a cyberspace privacy group, against telecommunications giant AT&T alleging that it violated citizens' rights to privacy as well as several federal statutes when it allowed the National Security Agency [...]

The US Third Circuit Court of Appeals Friday overturned a Pittsburgh municipality ordinance requiring canvassers to register with police before going door to door. The ACLU filed suit on behalf of a local of the Service Employees International Union involved in a get-out-the-vote campaign for Democratic presidential candidate Senator John Kerry prior to the 2004 [...]

A spokesman for the Administrative Office of the US Courts said Friday that creating an inspector general for the federal judiciary to investigate possible ethical violations by federal judges "would be a serious incursion into judicial independence" and was unnecessary, as the judicial branch was already subject to congressional oversight and had internal procedures for [...]

In the latest legal assault on the Sarbanes-Oxley Act , conservative business organization the Free Enterprise Fund has asked former US solicitor general and Whitewater special prosecutor Kenneth Starr , former US assistant attorney general Viet Dinh, and 2000 Bush legal team member Michael Carvin to challenge provisions of the law that set up the [...]

The UN Security Council Friday passed a wide-ranging resolution on duties to civilians in armed conflict that included a landmark affirmation of an international responsibility to protect in the face of war crimes, genocide and ethic cleansing when their own countries refuse to take action. The Council specifically invoked two key sections of the final [...]

A Review of the FBI's Investigative Activities Concerning Potential Protesters at the 2004 Democratic and Republican National Political Conventions, Special Report, US Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, April 2006. Read the full text of the report . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.