Prosecutors have dropped objections to the release of four high ranking Serbian officials ahead of their trial for war crimes, allowing them to return to Belgrade as early as today. The four include Milan Milutinovic, a former Serbian president under Slobodan Milosevic, along with Nikola Sainovic, Dragoljub Ojdanic and Vladimir Lazarevic. It is common for [...]

Two high-ranking but unidentified United Nations officials have been cited in the criminal complaint released Thursday against South Korean businessman Tongsun Park for his involvement in the Iraq oil-for-food scandal . Park is accused of accepting millions of dollars from the Iraqi government while operating in the US as an unregistered agent for Saddam Hussein. [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Paul Goda S.J. of Santa Clara University School of Law says that the procedures adopted for the election of a pope are founded on the conviction that there is a higher good to be served beyond the simple transmission of institutional power … In describing a dialog among the Apostles at the [...]

Here's a run-down of law-related events, expected developments and live webcasts on JURIST's docket for Friday, April 15. The US Senate convenes at 9:30 AM ET today, when it will consider H.R. 1268 , the Iraq/Afghanistan Supplemental Appropriations bill. Watch a live webcast of the session. The US House is not in session today. The [...]

Nutraceutical Corp. v. Crawford, United States District Court for the District of Utah Central Division, Judge Campbell, April 13, 2005 ban on the weight-loss supplement ephedra, which was pulled off the market by the FDA in April of 2004 after it was found to be linked to some 155 deaths]. Read the full text of [...]

Li v. Oregon, et al., Supreme Court of the State of Oregon, Justice Gillette, April 15, 2005 . Excerpt: e conclude as follows. First, since the effective date of Measure 36, marriage in Oregon has been limited under the Oregon Constitution to opposite-sex couples. Second, Oregon statutory law in existence before the effective date of [...]

In response to recent refusals by some pharmacists objecting on moral grounds to filling prescriptions for emergency contraceptives or birth control pills, federal legislators unveiled a draft bill on Thursday that would require pharmacies to fill all prescriptions, placing the impetus on the pharmacy and not on individual pharmacists. Sponsored by Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) [...]

Fighting off a barrage of opposition to the agreement, French President Jacques Chirac embarked Thursday on a campaign to save the proposed European Union constitution from defeat in an upcoming national referendum. With the anti-treaty position slightly ahead in opinion polls, Chirac hosted a "town hall meeting" on the referendum with 83 young people on [...]

A provincial appeals court has issued what is reported to be China's first ruling that confessions obtained by coercion, torture, or trickery cannot be used in court, and while defense attorneys hailed the decision as an important step toward ending police torture in the country, they cautioned that further reforms are necessary to adequately protect [...]

United States v. Tongsun Park, United States District Court Southern District of New York, unsealed April 14, 2005 . Read the full text of the FBI complaint . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.