A Spanish parliamentary commission investigating the Madrid train bombings from last March has completed its hearings and will now draft a final report on its findings. The hearings, which were aimed at determining how Islamic radicals were able to bomb several train cars and kill 191 people, often involved divisive political debates between the Conservative [...]

Washington State Republican Party et al. v. King County Division of Records, December 22, 2004 . Read the full text of the opinion here. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

An Argentine court Wednesday charged former President Fernando de la Rua with improperly allocating public funds for his own private use and for the use of his political party while serving in public office from 1999 to 2001. The court froze approximately $74,000 (220,000 Argentine pesos) of his personal assets; if convicted he could face [...]

The Nevada Supreme Court has ruled that a law prohibiting criminals from profiting from sales of their memoirs controverted constitutional rights to free speech. The so-called "Son of Sam" law was deemed too broad, despite the state's compelling interests in preventing profiteering for criminal misconduct and compensating victims of crime. Justice Maupin wrote in the [...]

Updating a story reported earlier today in JURIST's Paper Chase, the Washington Supreme Court ruled Wednesday afternoon that 735 disputed ballots should be counted in the state gubernatorial race recount. The contested absentee ballots in the extremely close statewide race were from Seattle's King County, where hand recount totals announced later in the day gave [...]

A federal judge Wednesday lifted a interim hold on Proposition 200, the voter-approved initiative that would deny illegal immigrants certain government benefits. The temporary restraining order was orginally placed by US District Judge David Burry to determine the constitutionality of the proposition. AP has more. JURIST's Paper Chase has background on the challenges to Proposition [...]

A Florida appeals court Wednesday upheld a $500,000 lower court verdict in favor of a former TWA flight attendant who had sued tobacco companies for health damage caused by secondhand smoke on airplanes. The case turned on interpretation of a 1997 settlement between the tobacco industry and nonsmoking flight attendants under which the industry agreed [...]

Microsoft v. Commission of the European Communities, European Court of First Instance, President Judge Bo Vesterdorf, December 22, 2004 . Read the full text of the judgment here. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Chile's Supreme Court Wednesday heard an appeal by lawyers for former president General Augusto Pinochet against a lower appeals court ruling Monday that had upheld a house arrest order against him and had found him fit to stand trial on human rights charges. Pinochet, 89, has been quietly released from Santiago's Hospital Militar where he [...]

Homemaking diva Martha Stewart called Wednesday for US sentencing reform in a Christmas message posted on her defense website. Stewart, currently imprisoned for securities-related crimes at the Alderson West Virginia federal correctional facility for women, said she herself was "fine, really", but directed her readers' attention to "the women here in Alderson will never have [...]