JURIST Guest Columnist Stephen Gilles of Quinnipiac University School of Law says that after a third day of Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, US Supreme Court nominee Judge Samuel Alito seems to be on his way towards confirmation given his performance thusfar, the current balance in the Senate and the fact that he's replacing Justice Sandra [...]

Members of the US Senate Judiciary Committee will continue their questioning of Supreme Court nominee Judge Samuel Alito into the fourth day of his confirmation hearings Thursday following Wednesday testimony dominated by questions concerning abortion and Alito's membership in a controversial Princeton alumni association. Alito was pressed on his refusal to disavow a 1985 memo [...]

US Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine has forwarded a request to investigate President Bush’s authorization of National Security Agency (NSA) eavesdropping on US residents to the Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, citing a lack of jurisdiction to begin his own inquiry into the controversial program. On Tuesday the Pentagon’s inspector general also declined to [...]

Brown v. Sanders, Supreme Court of the United States, January 11, 2006 . Read the Court's opinion per Justice Scalia, along with a dissent from Justice Stevens, joined by Justice Souter, and a second dissent from Justice Breyer, joined by Justice Ginsburg. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Abdul Aziz Hakim , leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the country’s most powerful Shiite politician, said Wednesday that a new Iraqi government dominated by religious Shiites elected in the December 15 parliamentary vote would not “change the essence” of the new Iraqi constitution despite a compromise with Sunni Arabs [...]

The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in House v. Bell , where it will decide whether appellant Paul Gregory House, who was convicted and sentenced to death for the abduction, attempted rape and murder of Carolyn Muncey in July 1985, presented enough exculpatory evidence to merit another look at his case. The justices [...]

The UN Wednesday officially named Serge Brammertz , Deputy Prosecutor with the International Criminal Court (ICC) and a former Belgian federal prosecutor, as the new Commissioner of the ongoing UN investigation into the February 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri . The announcement followed speculation that he would be appointed as German [...]

A Yemeni man alleged to have been an al Qaeda propagandist and security officer for Osama bin Laden told a US military commission at Guantanamo Bay Wednesday that he was boycotting the just-reconvened proceedings . At a pre-trial hearing, Ali Hamza al-Bahlul held up a sign that said "boycott" printed in Arabic and then smiled [...]

A man from the Georgian Republic who lobbed a grenade toward US President George W. Bush while he was on a visit there in May last year was sentenced to life imprisonment on Wednesday by a Georgian court. Vladimir Arutunyan , who originally confessed but later recanted, landed the grenade within 50 meters of Bush [...]

Argentine judge Jorge Urso has decided to send accused Bosnian Serb war criminal Milan Lukic, arrested in Buenos Aires in August, to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague for trial, according to AFP sources. Lukic, one of the 10 most-wanted Bosnian Serbs, had been on the run for more than [...]