[JURIST] The New Jersey Legislature [official website] passed a bill [text, PDF] Thursday allowing same-sex civil unions [JURIST news archive] in response to a New Jersey Supreme Court [official website] ruling [text, PDF; JURIST report] in October that said the state legislature had 180 days to decide whether the state would recognize same-sex marriage or another form of civil partnership. The measure was approved by the state Assembly 56-19 and passed the Senate 23-12. The bill says:

The Legislature has chosen to establish civil unions by amending the current marriage statute to include same-sex couples. In doing so, the Legislature is continuing its longstanding history of insuring equality under the laws for all New Jersey citizens by providing same-sex couples with the same rights and benefits as heterosexual couples who choose to marry.

[JURIST] Lawyers for Saddam Hussein [JURIST news archive] accused Iraqi officials of interfering with judicial independence Thursday, after a number of public statements [AFP report] from officials that Iraq's Cassation Court, currently considering Hussein's appeal [JURIST report], would ultimately affirm the former Iraqi president's death sentence [JURIST report]. Hussein's lawyers also criticized comments from prosecutors that the life sentence of former Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan [JURIST news archive] would be raised to a death penalty as well.

Hussein's legal team told the media that the statements violate the principles of justice and a fair trial, and called for intervention by Arab governments [UPI report] and international human rights groups to ensure that such basic principles are upheld. Hussein was convicted on crimes against humanity charges [charging instrument, PDF] committed in the Iraqi town of Dujail [JURIST news archive; BBC trial timeline] in 1982. He is currently on trial on separate genocide charges [JURIST news archive; BBC trial timeline] for allegedly killing 100,000 Kurds during the so-called "Anfal" campaigns [HRW backgrounder] in the late 1980s. DPA has more.

[JURIST] One day after Florida death row inmate Angel Diaz [Amnesty International profile] endured a 34-minute-long - and apparently painful - execution, death penalty [JURIST news archive] critics filed papers with the Florida Supreme Court [official website] seeking to once again halt the death penalty in the state. Petitioners, including numerous people currently on Florida’s death row roster [text], filed an emergency petition [text, PDF] Thursday with the court asking it to exercise its All Writs jurisdiction and declare that Florida’s lethal injections procedures [text, PDF] violate the Eighth Amendment [text] of the US Constitution.

Angel Diaz was executed Wednesday for the 1979 murder of a Miami strip club manager. Officials had to administer the sodium pentothal, pancuronium bromide, and potassium chloride cocktail twice, during which time witnesses claim he grimaced, contorted, and gasped for breath. Officials claim that Diaz had a liver condition that slowed the absorption of the drugs, but that he was unconscious and experienced no pain. The US Supreme Court reviewed Florida’s lethal injection procedure earlier this year when they stayed [JURIST report] the execution of Clarence Hill, who was ultimately executed [JURIST report] in September. Reuters has more. The St. Petersburg Times has local coverage.

[JURIST] The Serbian Supreme Court ordered a retrial Thursday in the case of 14 former members of Serb militias who were convicted [JURIST report] of war crimes for killing some 200 Croatian POWs at a pig farm near Vukovar [BBC backgrounder] in 1991 at the end of a three-month siege there. The 14 defendants were sentenced to a total of 219 years in prison, and both the prosecution and defense appealed the verdict. The high court ruled Thursday that the entire verdict should be cancelled after overturning portions of the verdict that convicted some defendants and acquitted others. Sixteen people were initially charged in the case.

One of the defendants confessed to the killings [JURIST report] in court last November. The Vukovar case, which opened in March 2004 [JURIST report] has been widely seen as a test of Serbia's domestic war crimes process. Three leaders of the massacre are currently being tried [JURIST report; ICTY case backgrounder] in The Hague by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. UPI has more. B92 has local coverage.

[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit [official website] has upheld a lower court ruling [opinion, PDF] that defendants of slaves have no standing to sue companies that allegedly profited from slavery before the practice was abolished. In an opinion by Judge Richard Posner [official profile] Wednesday, the court ruled:

we think that the district court was correct, with some exceptions to be noted, in ruling that the plaintiffs lack standing to sue. It would be impossible by the methods of litigation to connect the defendants' alleged misconduct with the financial and emotional harm that the plaintiffs claim to have suffered as a result of that conduct. ...

... there is a fatal disconnect between the victims and the plaintiffs. When a person is wronged he can seek redress, and if he wins, his descendants may benefit, but the wrong to the ancestor is not a wrong to the descendants. For if it were, then (problems of proof to one side) statutes of limitations would be toothless. A person whose ancestor had been wronged a thousand years ago could sue on the ground that it was a continuing wrong and he is one of the victims. ....

But this causal chain is too long and has too many weak links for a court to be able to find that the defendants' conduct harmed the plaintiffs at all, let alone in an amount that could be estimated without the wildest speculation. It is impossible to determine how much, if any, less slavery there would have been had the defendants not done business with slaveowners, what effect a diminution of slavery would have had on bequests by ancestors of the class members, and how much of the value of those bequests would have trickled down to the class members.

[JURIST] The UK High Court on Thursday rejected [judgment text] an appeal [JURIST report] brought by the family of a Brazilian man who was shot and killed by London police [JURIST report] two weeks after the July 2005 London transit bombings [JURIST news archive] when police mistook him for alleged terrorist Hussain Osman [BBC charge summary]. The appeal was brought against a July decision by prosecutors not to bring individual charges [JURIST report] against the police officers involved in the shooting. Lawyers for the family of Jean Charles de Menezes [advocacy website] said the decision by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) [official website] not to prosecute the officers should have been given to a jury. During a hearing in the case, the family's lawyers argued that "the rule of law would be undermined" if there were no charges, but the court ruled that the CPS decision not to prosecute was reasonable. The family has said they will appeal Thursday's decision.

In September, the London Metropolitan Police [official website] pleaded not guilty [JURIST report] to criminal charges under the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act [text; backgrounder] for "failing to provide for the health, safety and welfare" of the public in causing the death of de Menezes. A hearing in that case is scheduled for January. BBC News has more.

[JURIST] The UN General Assembly held a ceremony [recorded video] Thursday to administer the oath of office to new UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon [official profile; UN materials]. Ban, appointed [JURIST report] to the position in October, will succeed Kofi Annan [official profile] when the two-term secretary-general steps down on December 31.

The General Assembly also paid tribute to Annan's 10 years of service. In remarks [text] during the ceremony, Annan said that in the past decade the UN has "internalized the notion ... that development, security and human rights must go hand in hand; and that there can be no security without development and no development without security, and neither can be sustained in the longer term without being rooted in the rule of law and respect for human rights." AP has more. The UN News Service has additional coverage.

[JURIST] The Argentinean Senate [official website] has unanimously approved a bill that refers to the mass killings of Armenians [BBC Q/A] in Turkey around the time of World War I as genocide and establishes a day of annual commemoration on April 24. The bill has already passed in the lower house of parliament and must still be signed by the president. The Turkish government last week condemned the bill [JURIST report], saying the draft not only disregards historical facts, but is in violation of international law [Turkish Daily News report]. PanARMENIAN.Net has more.

The Argentinean bill follows closely on the heels of controversial French legislation touching on the same issue. In October, the French National Assembly approved a bill [JURIST report] criminalizing any refusal to characterize the Armenian as genocide, but it still needs approval by the French Senate and President Jacques Chirac [official profile, in French] to become national law. Many believe that will never happen, however, as both Chirac and the European Union have separately and publicly denounced the bill, and many French observers view it as a direct violation of the nation's tradition of free speech. Chirac has already offered an apology [JURIST report] over the bill to Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan [official website; BBC profile].

[JURIST] The US Defense Department Thursday announced the release of 16 Saudi Arabian detainees [press release] from Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive]. Saudi Arabian Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul said that the detainees would now be "subject to the Saudi system." Over 40 Saudi detainees have now been released from the US detention facility since May. A total of 96 detainees have departed Guantanamo Bay during 2006, and a total of 360 detainees have left the facility since 2002. Approximately 415 detainees are still being held at the facility, 100 of whom have been determined eligible for transfer or release.

Last month, the State Department announced [statement] in the context of another release that all detainees determined by Combatant Status Review Tribunals [DOD materials] not to be enemy combatants had been released from Guantanamo [JURIST report]. AP has more.

[JURIST] Chinese human rights attorney Gao Zhisheng [Wikipedia profile] has been convicted by a court in Beijing of inciting subversion of state power [CECC report], his lawyers said Thursday. Gao was convicted after entering a guilty plea, but his lawyers - who were not permitted to attend court proceedings - said they doubted the credibility of his "spontaneous" admission of guilt.

Gao gained international notice by representing controversial clients, including members of the banned sect Falun Gong [group website; BBC backgrounder]. Gao's license to practice was revoked [CECC backgrounder; HRW letter] late last year. There have been several high-profile subversion trials in China this year, including the jailing of several journalists and a ten-year sentence for a teacher [JURIST reports] who posted pro-democracy essays on the Internet. AsiaNews has more.

[JURIST] A federal jury in New Orleans returned a verdict [Merck press release] in favor of pharmaceutical giant Merck [corporate website] Wednesday, concluding that the company did not fail to adequately warn a Tennessee man's doctors about risks associated with the painkiller Vioxx [Merck Vioxx Information Center website; JURIST news archive]. Anthony Dedrick suffered a heart attack after taking Vioxx, and his lawyers argued that Merck failed to sufficiently warn his doctors about the risks of taking the drug and that the lack of a warning caused the heart attacks. Both claims were rejected by the jury. Merck faces thousands of lawsuits over the drug, which was pulled from the market in September 2004 after a study showed that it could double the risk of heart attack or stroke if taken for more than 18 months. This is the fifth federal trial to reach a verdict; Merck has won four of those cases, with the fifth decided in favor of the plaintiff. A federal judge, however, threw out the $50 million jury verdict [JURIST report] in the Merck loss as "grossly excessive" and ordered a new trial to determine damages.

Last month, US District Judge Eldon Fallon, who is responsible for co-ordinating pre-trial procedures [JURIST report] in the federal cases, rejected [order, PDF; JURIST report] a bid to have all federal lawsuits [consolidated litigation website] against Merck brought in connection with Vioxx consolidated in a single national class action against the company. AP has more.

[JURIST] The Israeli Supreme Court [official website] ruled [opinion text; summary, DOC] Thursday that not all targeted killings [BBC backgrounder] of Palestinian militants are prohibited by international law. Two Israeli human rights groups filed a petition in 2002 seeking a ban on the Israeli policy, which government officials defend as the most effective method of stopping Palestinian terrorists from bombing Israel targets. The high court acknowledged that some killings were not legal, but refused to order a complete ban:

Thus it is decided that it cannot be determined in advance that every targeted killing is prohibited according to customary international law, just as it cannot be determined in advance that every targeted killing is permissible according to customary international law. The law of targeted killing is determined in the customary international law, and the legality of each individual such act must be determined in light of it.

First, well based, strong and convincing information is needed before categorizing a civilian as falling into one of the discussed categories. Innocent civilians are not to be harmed. Information which has been most thoroughly verified is needed regarding the identity and activity of the civilian who is allegedly taking a direct part in the hostilities. The burden of proof on the army is heavy. In the case of doubt, careful verification is needed before an attack is made.

Second, a civilian taking a direct part in hostilities cannot be attacked if a less harmful means can be employed. A civilian taking a direct part in hostilities is not an outlaw (in the original sense of that word Â? people deprived of legal rights and protection for the commission of a crime). He does not relinquish his human rights. He must not be harmed more than necessary for the needs of security. Among the military means, one must choose the means which least infringes upon the humans rights of the harmed person. Thus, if a terrorist taking a direct part in hostilities can be arrested, interrogated, and tried, those are the means which should be employed. Arrest, investigation, and trial are not means which can always be used. At times the possibility does not exist whatsoever; at times it involves a risk so great to the lives of the soldiers, that it is not required.

Third, after an attack on a civilian suspected of taking an active part, at such time, in hostilities, a thorough investigation regarding the precision of the identification of the target and the circumstances of the attack upon him is to be performed (retroactively). That investigation must be independent. In appropriate cases compensation should be paid as a result of harm caused to an innocent civilian.

Fourth, every effort must be made to minimize harm to innocent civilians. Harm to innocent civilians caused during military attacks (collateral damage) must be proportional. That is, attacks should be carried out only if the expected harm to innocent civilians is not disproportional to the military advantage to be achieved by the attack. For example, shooting at a terrorist sniper shooting at soldiers or civilians from his porch is permitted, even if an innocent passerby might be harmed. Such harm conforms to the principle of proportionality. However, that is not the case if the building is bombed from the air and scores of its residents and passersby are harmed. Between these two extremes are the hard cases. Thus, a meticulous examination of every case is required.

[JURIST] US District Judge Richard J. Leon [official profile] said Wednesday that systems set up by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) [official website] to manage housing payments for victims of Hurricane Katrina [JURIST news archive] had created a "legal disaster" and ordered several FEMA officials to appear in court Monday to testify about the housing program. Leon ruled last month that FEMA must reinstate certain housing payments [ruling, PDF; JURIST report] for Katrina victims due to the agency's failure to clearly explain to evacuees why they were denied housing assistance under the Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act [text].

In an order [PDF text] accompanying his ruling, Leon directed FEMA to "provide, as soon as possible, more detailed explanations for the denials of evacuees' eligibility for housing assistance benefits," but a government lawyer told the judge Wednesday that FEMA's computer system could not generate the information. Leon expressed frustration at the delay, saying that "people's rights are being denied," and noting that FEMA employees could write the letters by hand. FEMA has appealed the ruling [JURIST report], but Leon has indicated that FEMA should begin work to comply with the decision immediately. AP has more.

[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled [opinion, PDF] Wednesday that a 1982 ban on corporate farming [I-300 text] in Nebraska is unconstitutional because it violates the dormant commerce clause. The federal appeals court upheld a lower court decision [PDF text; JURIST report], which was appealed by the state attorney general. As described by the appeals court, the ban "prohibits corporations or syndicates (non-family-owned limited partnerships) from acquiring an interest in 'real estate used for farming or ranching in [Nebraska]' or 'engag[ing] in farming or ranching,' with certain exceptions," and the court found that this "discriminates against out-of-state entities both on its face and because of its discriminatory intent."

The lower court also ruled that the corporate farming ban violated the Americans with Disabilities Act [text] because it requires at least one member of the family who owns the farm to be involved with day-to-day physical farming activities, but the appeals court did not address this issue. Nebraska could appeal Wednesday's decision to the US Supreme Court, but in 2004 the high court refused to hear an appeal of a similar ruling from the Eighth Circuit declaring South Dakota's corporate farming law unconstitutional. AP has more.