The UK Court of Appeal on Wednesday upheld a lower court decision holding that Australian terror suspect David Hicks should be granted British citizenship, dismissing an appeal from Britain's Home Office . Hicks has been held at the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay since 2002 for allegedly supporting Taliban troops in Afghanistan. Hicks, who [...]

Iraqi High Criminal Court chief judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman , who is presiding over the trial of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein , said Wednesday that Hussein and one of his co-defendants, Hussein's half-brother and former Baath official Barzan Ibrahim , have refused to submit handwriting samples to the court so they could be analyzed by [...]

Leading Wednesday's international brief, the UK Court of Appeal has overturned a lower tribunal's decision to block the removal of failed asylum applicants to Zimbabwe where human rights agencies and NGOs allege that they face torture and inhumane treatment at the hands of Zimbabwe's security forces. The appellate decision held that UK Asylum and Immigration [...]

In a joint statement issued late Tuesday, US Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) and House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) said they would reexamine two provisions of a contentious immigration bill passed by the House of Representatives last year "to produce a strong border security bill that will not make unlawful presence in the United [...]

In the wake of a request from the UN-supported Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) that the trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor be transferred for security reasons, members of the UN Security Council said Tuesday that they were having difficulty finding a country willing to take in Taylor after a verdict is reached. [...]

Lawyers for the US government on Tuesday urged a federal appeals court panel to remove District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth from a case involving the alleged mismanagement of American Indian money by the US Department of the Interior to "restore the appearance of fairness." Peter Keisler, an assistant attorney general from the Justice Department, [...]

The French National Assembly , the lower house of parliament, on Wednesday approved compromise labor legislation to replace the controversial First Employment Contract (contrat premiere embauche, CPE) , the youth jobs plan that prompted weeks of protests across France. The new proposal calls for increased training and internships for youths, and would change only Article [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Douglas Branson of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law says that defense lawyers in recent corporate fraud cases are not seeking to introduce reasonable doubts that might lead a jury to acquit their clients, but in the absence of much direct evidence are rather offering competing versions of events that threaten [...]

Council on American Islamic Relations v. Ballenger, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, April 11, 2006 . Read the full text of the dismissal . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

French students and union members staged sporadic "victory marches" Tuesday to celebrate the government's withdrawal of the First Employment Contract (contrat premiere embauche, CPE) as legislators prepared for a vote on a replacement $180M job training and subsidization package that could come as early as Wednesday . Protest leaders are attempting to keep up pressure [...]