The Special Court for Sierra Leone opened its final scheduled trial in Freetown Monday as outgoing chief prosecutor David Crane outlined his case against three former members of the the country's military junta – Alex Tamba Brima, Brima Bazzy Kamara and Santigie Borbor Kanu. The leaders of the of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council who [...]

The House of Lords, the upper chamber of the UK Parliament, Monday turned back by 249-119 a controversial anti-terror bill that would have permitted government ministers to issue so-called "control orders" limiting the movement or freedoms of certain terror suspects without charge or trial. Former Labour Party Lord Chancellor Lord Irvine is said to have [...]

Shepard v. US, Supreme Court of the United States, Justice Souter, March 7, 2005 . Excerpt: Title 18 U.S.C. § 924(e) (2000 ed. and Supp. II), popularly known as the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), mandates a minimum 15-year prison sentence for anyone possessing a firearm after three prior convictions for serious drug offenses or [...]

Wilkinson v. Dotson, Supreme Court of the United States, March 7, 2005 . Excerpt: Throughout the legal journey from Preiser to Balisok, the Court has focused on the need to ensure that state prisoners use only habeas corpus (or similar state) remedies when they seek to invalidate the duration of their confinement—either directly through an [...]

Ballard v. Commissioner, Supreme Court of the United States, Justice Ginsburg, March 7, 2005 . Excerpt: The Tax Court's practice of not disclosing the special trial judge's original report, and of obscuring the Tax Court judge's mode of reviewing that report, impedes fully informed appellate review of the Tax Court's decision. In directing the Tax [...]

Plagued by allegations of football prospects recruited with sex and alcohol, legal action brought against the university by two women who claimed they were raped by CU football players, and a free speech controversy about Ward Churchill , a professor in the university's Ethnic Studies department who supposedly made disparaging remarks about the victims of [...]

Former Yugoslav army general Momcilo Perisic arrived in The Hague Monday as anticipated to surrender to officials from the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Perisic has been charged with eight counts of crimes against humanity and five counts of war crimes. Also Monday, the ICTY released the details of the charges against him, [...]

AP is reporting that President Bush has picked Under Secretary of State John Bolton to be US ambassador to the United Nations , according to a government official "knowledgeable about the move". Bolton, regarded as a conservative hardliner on foreign policy issues and a stauch opponent of the UN-sponsored International Criminal Court , indicated earlier [...]

Former Rwandan mayor Juvenal Kajelijeli Monday began his courtroom appeal of a life sentence imposed on himm in 2003 by the UN-created International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda . Kajelijeli, onetime mayor of the Rwandan city of Mukingo, was accused and convicted of genocide, extermination, and direct and public incitement to commit genocide . Read the [...]

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Lebanese President Emile Lahoud agreed at a summit Monday that Syria would pull its troops back from their current positions in Lebanon and move to the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon by the end of March. Syrian troops originally entered Lebanon as peacekeepers and helped end a 15-year civil war [...]