[JURIST] US President George W. Bush Tuesday vetoed [White House remarks; recorded video] a bill that would have provided $122 billion to pay for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan [JURIST news archives] but would have also required US troops to start pulling out of Iraq within four months. Bush has previously promised to veto any proposed legislation that included a timetable for a troop withdrawal from Iraq, arguing that such a schedule would hamper soldiers in the field and encourage enemies of the US.

Senate Democrats criticized Bush's decision, saying that the veto denied troops vitally important funding. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid [official website] said in a statement [text]: "A bipartisan majority of Congress sent the President a bill to fully fund our troops and change the mission in Iraq. The president refused to sign it. That is his right, but now he has an obligation to explain his plan to responsibly end this war." Bloomberg has more.

[JURIST] The Missouri Supreme Court [official website] Tuesday unanimously upheld [opinion] a 2005 law that allows parents to sue people who help their minor daughters get an abortion without parental consent. Planned Parenthood [advocacy website] had challenged the law on the basis that it infringed the group's First Amendment [LII backgrounder] right to free speech by blocking it from disseminating information or counseling clients about abortion. The Court applied a narrow interpretation of the law, finding that it only prohibited active aide in obtaining an abortion beyond merely providing information and thus did not infringe upon free speech.

The law [SB 1 text] states that “no person shall intentionally cause, aid, or assist a minor to obtain an abortion without the consent” of a parent or court order. Parents and guardians can sue anyone who either performs an abortion or helps the minor to obtain an abortion. A lower court judge upheld the law in 2005, but issued an injunction [JURIST report] against enforcing it pending an appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court. The same month, a federal judge reached essentially the same finding and also issued a temporary restraining order [JURIST report]. AP has more.

[JURIST] The US Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled [PDF opinion] Tuesday that Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) [official website] had no First Amendment right to turn over an illegally taped telephone call to reporters. In 1996, McDermott leaked a recorded telephone conversation in which several Republican lawmakers discussed ethics allegations against then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga) [personal website] to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the New York Times, which published stories on the case in January 1997. The court found his actions particularly problematic because McDermott was serving on the House Ethics Committee [official website] at the time. Judge David B. Sentelle dissented from the decision, saying that it would prevent the public from learning important information about the ethics of its elected representatives. McDermott had argued that his actions were protected by the First Amendment [JURIST report].

McDermott was previously found liable [PDF opinion; JURIST report] of violating 18 USC 2511(1)(c) [statute text] by a three-judge panel, but in June the court granted his petition for an en banc rehearing in front of the entire nine-judge panel. Lawyers for ABC, NBC, CBS, the Associated Press, TIME, Newsweek, and the Washington Post among others filed an amicus curiae brief [PDF] on behalf of McDermott, arguing that the First Amendment protects him and that he should not incur liability for merely receiving tapes obtained by other parties. AP has more.

[JURIST] About 70 lawyers representing some of the top firms in the US Tuesday lobbied various congressional offices to restore the writ of habeas corpus to Guantanamo Bay detainees brought before military tribunals. The lawyers, who also included public defenders and sole practitioners, held over 50 meetings with Washington legislators, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California), to draw attention to the issue.

The effort coinciding with annual Law Day [event website] celebrations came one day after the US Supreme Court declined [JURIST report] to hear a lawsuit brought by two Guantanamo Bay detainees challenging the legality of Congress' decision to deny habeas challenges by suspected terrorists under the Military Commissions Act of 2006 [PDF text]. In early April, the Court declined to hear [JURIST report] another case brought by other Guantanamo detainees on whether those prisoners could challenge their detention in US federal court. Various legislative projects to reinstate the right of habeas corpus are still pending. In January, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) introduced the Habeas Corpus Restoration Act of 2007 [S.185 text] to restore the right to suspects brought before military commissions. In February, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) introduced the Restoring the Constitution Act of 2007 [S.576 text], which would restore habeas corpus rights, ban evidence obtained through torture and require US compliance with the Geneva Conventions. The Hill has more.

[JURIST] Thousands of protesters rallied in cities across the United States Tuesday for more relaxed immigration [JURIST news archive] laws and facilitated routes to citizenship for illegal immigrants. Marchers took to the streets in Los Angeles, New York, Detroit, Washington DC, and elsewhere but organizers said the range of activities marking May 1 showed the strength and diversity of the movement. Organizers said beforehand they expected this year's turnout to be lower than the 1 million people who took to the streets to protest immigration restrictions last May 1 [JURIST report] because increased Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) [official website] raids in recent months have frightened many immigrants out of speaking in public.

In March, the White House floated a new immigration reform proposal [PDF text] that would grant illegal immigrants three-year work visas for $3,500 but would also force them to return home to apply for US residency and pay a $10,000 fine. Immigration groups have criticized the bill as unrealistic because the imposed fine is considerably more than most illegal human smugglers charge for entry into the United States. In April, protesters marched in Los Angeles [JURIST report] to oppose the plan. AP has more.

[JURIST] The English Lord Chancellor told a House of Lords committee Tuesday that the scheduled creation of a new Ministry of Justice split off from the traditional Home Office [official website] would go ahead later this month without any parliamentary bill and, if need be, over the objections of senior judges. Lord Falconer told members of the Lords Constitution Committee [official website] that the creation of the new ministry on May 9 was "constitutionally acceptable" and that "safeguards" would be in place to assuage judicial concerns.

The plan [Home Office press release] to create the new justice ministry was developed [JURIST report] earlier this year and announced [transcript] in late March by British Prime Minister Tony Blair. It calls for a Ministry of Justice - a successor body to the current Department of Constitutional Affairs and the National Offender Management Service [official websites] - to be responsible for the judiciary and for prisons, probation and the prevention of criminal recidivism. The jurisdiction of a reduced Home Office would be largely confined to terrorism, security and immigration. Late last month the former Lord Chief Justice of English and Wales Lord Woolf said that shifting the traditional position of Lord Chancellor into the Ministry of Justice represented a major constitutional change [JURIST report] that should be undertaken only after serious study and not rushed through, warning that the responsibilities of the Lord Chancellor in the expanded Ministry might water down his traditionally close relationship with judges. Top judges have been particularly wary of the possibility that government concerns over sentencing practices [JURIST report] might put judges under political pressure [Phillips letter, PDF]; Lord Justice Thomas, who has led negotiations with the government on behalf of the judges, has said that "difficult questions of principle" relating to the merged responsibilities of the new ministry remain to be settled. BBC News has more.

[JURIST] Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko [official website; BBC profile] dismissed a second judge from the Ukrainian Constitutional Court [official website] Tuesday, just one day after dismissing [JURIST report] judge Valeriy Pshenichny for an "oath violation." Deputy Chairwoman and Justice Syuzanna Stanyk was dismissed Tuesday; Yushchenko has previously accused her of corruption. RFE/RL has more.

The court is currently considering the constitutionality of Yushchenko's decree [text; JURIST report] dissolving parliament and calling for new elections. He has since issued a second decree [JURIST report] moving the elections to late June. A majority of legislators objected to the decree, filing an appeal with the 18-judge Constitutional Court.

Yushchenko has insisted [JURIST report] that his dissolution decree was proper under the Ukrainian constitution [DOC text] and has said that officials who refuse to comply with his decree could face criminal prosecution [press release; JURIST report]. Yushchenko and current Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, who launched the legal challenge to the decree, were fierce rivals in the 2004 presidential election [JURIST report], the results of which were invalidated by the country's Supreme Court [JURIST report] following fraud allegations. Yushchenko was sworn in as Ukraine's president [JURIST report] in January 2005 on the wings of the populist Orange Revolution [BBC timeline] after winning a re-vote. Yushchenko reluctantly accepted Yanukovych as prime minister last June and the two have since clashed over parliamentary attempts to expand the cabinet's power [JURIST reports] at the expense of the presidency.

[JURIST] The Turkish Constitutional Court [official website] ruled Tuesday that the first parliamentary vote on the only candidate standing for election to the presidency of Turkey was invalid because a quorum of legislators did not participate in the vote as required by the Turkish constitution [text]. Under Article 102 of the constitution, two-thirds of a total of 550 legislators are required to vote in order to establish a quorum for the first round of presidential balloting [JURIST report]; although as many as 368 lawmakers may have been present [Turkish Daily News report] at the outset of proceedings, only 357 legislators actually cast ballots last Friday, 10 short of the required quorum. The opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) [Wikipedia backgrounder] boycotted the vote over concerns that candidate Abdullah Gul [official website; BBC profile], currently Turkey's foreign minister and a member of the ruling Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) [party website, in Turkish; Wikipedia backgrounder], would not be entirely secular. The secularist Turkish Army [official website] has also threatened to intervene if Gul is elected [Times report].

After Tuesday's ruling was announced, the government said it would consider holding early general elections. Justice Minister Cemil Cicek also said that the AKP would seek constitutional amendments to lower the minimum age for candidates before agreeing to hold new elections. Meanwhile, protesters calling for the resignation of the prime minister clashed with police [AP report] in Istanbul. Some 580 protesters were detained. Faced with mass protests over the weekend, Gul insisted that he would not withdraw from the election [JURIST report]. AP has more. BBC News has additional coverage.

[JURIST] Canadian Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day [official website] told the Canadian House of Commons for the first time Monday that the government had in fact heard claims from detainees held by authorities in Afghanistan that they had been tortured in Afghan custody, although he could not say whether those detainees had previously been held by Canadian forces. The claims were passed along by two Correctional Service of Canada [official website] officers first posted to local jails in Kandahar province in early February. The government had previously denied any direct knowledge of such claims. CBC News has more.

The Canadian government has been deeply embroiled in controversy over the torture issue since the Toronto Globe and Mail reported [text] late last month that thirty terror suspects were tortured by Afghan security forces after being transferred from the custody of Canadian troops belonging to NATO's ISAF [official website] mission. The detainees gave accounts of being beaten, electrocuted, starved, and left in freezing temperatures while detained in Kandahar province jails. The report prompted calls for the resignation [JURIST report] of Canadian Defense Minister Gordon O'Connor [official profile], for an end to the prison transfers, for a public inquiry, and even for an International Criminal Court investigation of "possible war crimes" [JURIST report] committed by Canadian officials.

In February the Canadian government ordered an official inquiry [JURIST report] into reported detainee abuse in Afghanistan following a civilian complaint filed by University of Ottawa law professor Amir Attaran [Sourcewatch profile], whose research [Globe and Mail report] uncovered a pattern of suspicious injuries on three detainees captured last April and later released. In 2005, Chief of Defense Staff Gen. Rick Hillier [official profile] signed the Canada-Afghanistan Detainee Agreement [text] authorizing prisoner transfers; Attaran said the agreement did not give Canada the power to inspect detainees [JURIST report] after their transfers, thus allowing broad latitude for torture to occur. Last week O'Connor said that Canada had made a new informal agreement with the Afghanistan government to monitor the condition of transferred prisoners after their release, but Day later claimed that Canadian authorities always had access to transferred prisoners [CTV reports].

[JURIST] A federal judge ruled Monday that a New Hampshire law [text] requiring that prescription information identifiable to particular doctors be kept confidential from pharmaceutical sales representatives violates the First Amendment and is unconstitutional. IMS Health and Verispan [corporate websites] filed a lawsuit [complaint, PDF; IMS case materials] last year after the law took effect, arguing that the so-called Prescription Restraint Law violates the first amendment by criminalizing their commercial and non-commercial speech, should be declared void for vagueness and overbreadth, and violates the dormant commerce clause.

According to an IMS press release [PDF text], US District Judge Paul Barbadoro found that the law "unconstitutionally restricted speech without directly serving the State's substantial interests" and that "alternatives exist that would achieve the State's interests as well as or better without restricting speech." New Hampshire Attorney General Kelly Ayotte said Monday that the state is considering appealing the decision. AP has more.

[JURIST] Efforts to combat widespread corruption in Iraq [JURIST news archive] are being hindered by security problems and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's reinstatement of a provision of the country's Saddam-era criminal procedure code [PDF text] allowing ministers to block corruption investigations of their own departments, according to a new US auditor's report [PDF text; materials] transmitted to Congress Monday. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction [official website] Stuart Bowen cited recent figures from Iraq's Commission for Public Integrity (CPI) [ICAC backgrounder] estimating the cost of corruption in Iraq at some $5 billion annually, and reported US findings that the key ministries of Oil, Interior, and Defense were the ones most subject to corruption claims.

Bowen said Iraq had made progress towards its anti-corruption goals, setting up new programs and strengthening existing initiatives, and noted that the CPI had "referred 8 ministers and 40 directors general to the judiciary system in connection with the mismanagement of $8 billion." The CPI nonetheless faced a new limitation as

the Prime Minister’s Office has ordered CPI not to refer to an investigative court any case involving a minister or former minister without prior approval of the Prime Minister. Article 136B in the Iraq Criminal Procedure Code provides that no case can go to trial concerning an issue done in the course of duty without permission of the minister of the affected agency. The law, enacted in 1971, was originally intended to be applied after the Investigative Judge concluded the investigation, but it is currently being used to stop investigations before the decision of the Investigative Judge. The law was suspended under CPA [Coalition Provisional Authority] Order 55, but the Prime Minister reinstated it.

[A review] of corruption-related cases showed that ministers have stopped prosecution and investigations on 48 cases involving 102 individuals under Article 136B.

[JURIST] An internal US Department of Justice order disclosed [NJ report] Monday by the National Journal gave two top aides to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales wide discretion to fire and hire political appointees within the Department who were not subject to Senate confirmation. The memo, dated March 2006, authorized then-Gonzales chief of staff D. Kyle Sampson and Gonzales's White House liaison, a post later filled by Monica Goodling, "to take final action in matters pertaining to the appointment, employment, pay, separation, and general administration" of almost all non-civil service DOJ employees. Sampson [DOJ press release; JURIST news archive] and Goodling [JURIST news archive] both resigned earlier this year in the midst of controversy over their roles in the firings of eight US Attorneys [JURIST news archive] for allegedly political reasons.

An early version of the March order had authorized the officials to act without even having to consult the Attorney General, but the wording of the instrument was later revised at the urging of the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel [official website], which was concerned about the constitutionality of such broad-brush delegation of power. An unnamed "senior executive branch official" quoted by the National Journal said of the order that it was "an attempt to make the department more responsive to the political side of the White House and to do it in such a way that people would not know it was going on." Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) expressed similar concern over the root strategy apparently reflected in the order, saying in a statement Monday:

This development is highly troubling in what it seems to reveal about White House politicization of key appointees in the Department of Justice. The mass firing of U.S. attorneys appeared to be part of a systematic scheme to inject political influence into the hiring and firing decisions of key justice employees. This secret order would seem to be evidence of an effort to hardwire control over law enforcement by White House political operatives.

[JURIST] Bertha Wilson [official profile], the first woman appointed to the Supreme of Canada [official website], died [SCC press release] over the weekend of Alzheimer's disease, it was disclosed Monday. Wilson was 83. She was appointed to the Canadian high court by then-Prime Minister Pierre Eliot Trudeau in 1982 after having become the first woman appointed to the Court of Appeal for Ontario in 1975. Born in Scotland, she emigrated to Canada with her husband after World War II and graduated from Dalhousie Law School [academic website] in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1957. She was best known in Canadian jurisprudence for her progressive interpretation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms [text], which took effect the same year she was named to Supreme Court. In 1988 she authored the Supreme Court's decision in R. v. Morgantaler [text] that overturned Criminal Code of Canada restrictions on abortion, and in 1990 in R. v Lavallee [text] she accepted battered-wife syndrome as a legitimate defense to a murder charge.

There are now four female justices [court photo] on the Supreme Court of Canada, including Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin [official profile], who joined the court in 1989, just two years before Wilson's retirement in 1991. CanWest has more.

[JURIST] Tennessee's moratorium on executions [executive order, PDF] will expire Wednesday after Gov. Phil Bredesen accepted revised death penalty protocols [PDF text] Monday. Bredesen ordered the moratorium [JURIST report] in February and directed the Tennessee Department of Corrections to conduct a "comprehensive review of the manner in which death sentences are administered... and provide [the governor] new protocols and related written procedures in administering death sentences in Tennessee." The new protocol includes more detailed guidelines for administering lethal injections [JURIST news archive] but still includes a controversial three-drug "cocktail" which some say may be ineffective in preventing inmates from suffering a painful death [JURIST report]. According to a letter from Tennessee Corrections Commissioner George M. Little:

After a rigorous consideration of our options and consultation with the review committee, I have directed the continued use of a three-chemical lethal injection protocol. The decision was based on this type of protocol being a proven method of execution. Tennessee and twenty-nine other jurisdictions have used this general method. It has been found to be humane when properly administered. We have significantly improved the documentation and procedures to support the three-chemical protocol.