Australian Prime Minister John Howard asked parliament Monday to establish an independent inquiry into whether any Australian companies paid bribes to Iraqi officials involved in the now defunct UN oil-for-food program . Last week, a UN report issued by an independent panel headed by former US Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker , found that officials [...]

Stuart Bowen, Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction , said that corruption continues to cost Iraq billions of dollars each year and has called for an American-Iraqi summit in the fight against corruption in Iraq, in a report to Congress released Sunday. Bowen said that it is crucial that the US support new anti-corruption agencies [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Sandra Jordan of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, former Associate Independent Counsel for the Iran/Contra prosecutions, says the prosecution of Scooter Libby and perhaps others in the Fitzgerald probe of the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity will be a delicate process that may end up telling us more [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Christopher Schroeder of Duke University Law School says that the claim that "executive privilege" concerns required the withdrawal of US Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers has been overstated, and that senatorial requests for information on her White House service there could have been selectively accommodated without crossing any proverbial "red line" … [...]

JURIST Contributing Editor William G. Ross, a specialist in constitutional history and the appointment of U.S. Supreme Court justices teaching at Cumberland School of Law, Samford University, says that the US Supreme Court nomination of Judge Samuel Alito will be hard for Democrats or conservative Republicans to defeat… Opponents of Samuel A. Alito's nomination to [...]

JURIST Special Guest Columnist Greg Kehoe, US Department of Justice Regime Crimes Liaison to the Iraqi Special Tribunal in Baghdad from March 2004 until March 2005, says that while the current Ad Dujayl case against Saddam Hussein is not about the biggest crime committed by his regime, it exemplifies its conduct and is a crucial [...]

The trial of Ahmed Omar Abu Ali , an American citizen accused of plotting to kill President Bush, begins Monday in federal court in Virginia. Abu Ali has pleaded not guilty to a nine-count indictment on charges of conspiring to kill the president and providing resources and support to al Qaeda. Abu Ali was arrested [...]

Thousands of people gathered Sunday under the dome of the Capitol Rotunda to view the closed casket of civil rights activist Rosa Parks , who died of natural causes at the age of 92 last week . Parks is remembered most for her December 1, 1955 act of refusing to give up her seat to [...]

Wire services are reporting that President Bush will nominate Judge Samuel Alito of the US Third Circuit Court of Appeals to fill the US Supreme Court seat left vacant by retiring justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Alito would be Bush's second choice for the spot after his first nominee, Harriet Miers , withdrew her name from [...]

Two US soldiers have been charged with assault, conspiracy to maltreat, and dereliction of duty for allegedly punching two detainees in the chest, shoulders and stomach at a base detention site in southern Afghanistan in early July. The alleged assault did not require medical attention for either detainee. One of the detainees has since been [...]