US Supreme Court nominee Judge Samuel Alito is expected to take the first step toward confirmation Tuesday, with an already apparent approval from the Senate Judiciary Committee . All ten Republicans on the committee have announced their support for Alito's nomination, assuring that it will go before the full Senate. It remains unclear whether all [...]

AP is reporting that the Iraqi High Criminal Court trying ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and co-defendants for crimes against humanity has canceled its session scheduled for Tuesday and has instead set January 29 as the date of its next hearing of witnesses in the case. The last-minute delay comes on the heels of Monday's [...]

Leading Tuesday's international brief, the Democratic Republic of Congo will hold the chairmanship of the African Union (AU) for 2006 under an agreement reached by a five-nation panel assigned to develop a compromise to the tense standoff concerning the proposed Sudanese bid to chair the African regional organization. Under the compromise, Congo will hold the [...]

A Council of Europe report released Tuesday argues that not only did alleged secret prisons run by the CIA in Europe exist, but that many European governments knew of the prisons and 'turned a blind eye'. Dick Marty, a Swiss legislator, prepared the report at the request of the Council of Europe ; he flagged [...]

A Russian court in Moscow has ordered that the financial assets of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev be seized to pay alleged back taxes and fines for the Yukos oil company. Yukos has been fined nearly &17 billion (USD) as a result of criminal prosecution against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev which resulted in [...]

US Army Corrections System: Procedures for Military Executions, US Army, January 17, 2006 . Read the full text of the regulations . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

What American Intelligence and Especially the NSA have been Doing to Defend the Nation, National Press Club, Deputy Director of National Intelligence General Michael Hayden, January 23, 2006 . Read the full text of the address. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

The US Army has issued new regulations governing the military death penalty . What the Army is calling a "major revision", however, raises questions whether the military is considering its first execution since 1961, when Army Pvt. John Bennett was put to death after being convicted of rape and attempted murder. Currently, there are six [...]

Defense lawyers for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby , the former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney indicted last October in the CIA leak case , petitioned Monday to use classified evidence in his trial, a move that could delay the case. The request and the documents are classified but defense lawyers hinted that [...]

Wisconsin Right to Life v. Federal Election Commission, Supreme Court of the United States, January 23, 2006 . Read the full text of the opinion . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.