Iraqi Electoral Commission sets Jan. 30 for national elections News
Iraqi Electoral Commission sets Jan. 30 for national elections

[JURIST] The Iraqi Electoral Commission announced Sunday that it has set January 30, 2005 as the date for national elections. Iraqis will vote for 275 members of a transitional parliament that will pick a new government and draft a permanent constitution to replace the interim document now in force. Once a constitution is enacted, the transitional parliament will be dissolved and new elections held near the end of 2005. Insurgent violence, particularly in Sunni areas of Iraq, has threatened to derail the elections and despite today's announcement is still a potential problem for both the holding and the legitimacy of the vote. The US military has promised to increase troop levels to help secure the January poll. BBC News has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Bank of England granted political independence

On May 6, 1997, British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown announced that the Bank of England would be granted political independence for the first time in the three-hundred year history of the Bank. This policy was statutized in the subsequent Bank of England Act of 1998 gave the Bank independent control of British monetary policy effective June 1, 1998. Read the Bank of England Act of 1998.

Chinese Exclusion Act barred Chinese laborers from US

On May 6, 1882, President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, barring Chinese laborers from entering the United States and prohibiting courts from bestowing US citizenship on Chinese. Connecticut Senator Joseph Hawley spoke out against the Act in these words: Let the proposed statue be read 100 years hence, dug out of the dust of ages and forgotten as it will be except for a line of sneer by some historian, and ask the young man not well read in the history of this country what was the reason for excluding these men and he would not be able to find it in the law. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and its successors were abolished in 1943 at the insistence of President Franklin Roosevelt.