US District Judge James Robertson , one of 11 members of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) , has resigned in protest over the National Security Agency's secret domestic surveillance program , according to a report Wednesday in the Washington Post. Robertson submitted his resignation letter to Chief Justice John Roberts late Monday, and though [...]

The Saddam Hussein trial resumed in Baghdad Wednesday, with the former ruler ending his boycott of court proceedings . The Iraqi High Criminal Court (formerly the Iraqi Special Tribunal ) heard testimony from its ninth witness, Ali Mohammed Hussan al-Haydari, who was 14 during the 1982 massacre in Dujail and whose family was tortured. Hussein, [...]

A UK High Court judge ruled Tuesday that Military Families Against the War (MFAW) and the Stop the War Coalition , representing British families of soldiers killed in Iraq, cannot challenge the government's refusal to hold a public inquiry into the UK decision to go to war . Last month, the groups petitioned the court [...]

Tammy Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District et al., United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, Judge John E. Jones III, December 20, 2005 . Excerpt: Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as [...]

CBS News is reporting that a judge in New York has imposed a $1 million-per-day fine against the New York City Transport Workers Union for violating state law by going on strike. Earlier Monday, NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority was "seeking to convince a Supreme Court judge to punish [...]

Members of the US House and Senate have abandoned plans to split the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit , dropping the proposal from the budget reconciliation bill. House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner had introduced legislation , which was included in the house version of the deficit-cutting bill, that would have created [...]

Former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio , who watched the market value of his company decline over $100 billion, has been indicted on 42 counts of insider trading for allegedly selling off more than $100 million in Qwest stock, the US attorney's office in Denver announced Tuesday. The criminal indictment follows the government's four-year-old investigation into [...]

US Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter has said that he will ask US Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito about the constitutionality of President Bush's authorization of domestic spying . In a letter Monday, Specter, who will preside over Alito's confirmation hearing next month, also asked Alito to be prepared to answer whether he agreed [...]

A Chilean appeals court has again upheld indictments against former dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet for his role in the disappearance of three dissidents who went missing in the early years of his 1973-1990 regime. Pinochet has been indicted in a total of nine cases, including the twenty-six indictments that were allowed to be joined earlier [...]

Press Briefing by US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and General Michael Hayden, Principal Deputy Director for National Intelligence on the legal issues surrounding the NSA authorization of domestic surveillance, December 19, 2005. Read the full text of the briefing. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.