[JURIST] A UK High Court dismissed [opinion, PDF] a lawsuit Wednesday that sought to force the government to put the ratification of the new EU reform treaty [JURIST news archive], known as the Treaty of Lisbon [PDF text; official website], to a public vote. Influential UK Conservative Party donor Stuart Wheeler [BBC profile] launched a legal bid to force a referendum on the treaty [JURIST report] in January, arguing that Prime Minister Gordon Brown [official website] had broken a pledge to hold a referendum on the pact, possibly warranting judicial review. The High Court agreed to consider the suit in May. Brown has said that a referendum is unnecessary because the treaty does not affect the UK constitution or impinge on British sovereignty. In dismissing Wheeler's lawsuit, the High Court ruled:

For the reasons we have given, we are satisfied that the claim lacks substantive merit and should be dismissed. Even if we had taken a different view of the substance of the case, in the exercise of the court’s discretion we would have declined to grant any relief, having regard in particular to the fact that Parliament has addressed the question whether there should be a referendum and, in passing the European Union (Amendment) Act 2008, has decided against one.

At a late stage in the proceedings, a few days before we expected to hand down judgment, we were informed by the Treasury Solicitor that, following Royal Assent to the European Union (Amendment) Act 2008, the government "is now proceeding to ratify the Treaty of Lisbon." We were concerned that the government might be intending to pre-judge or pre-empt the decision of the court by ratifying the treaty while the lawfulness of doing so without a referendum was still in issue before the court. The Prime Minister, however, acted promptly to remove our concern by Foreign Secretary making clear that ratification would not take place before the judgment was handed down.

In the event, the decision of the court is itself clear. We have found nothing in the claimant’s case to cast doubt on the lawfulness of ratifying the Lisbon Treaty without a referendum.

[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Wednesday rejected [opinion, PDF] an appeal of Canadian-born financier and former media mogul Conrad Black [CBC profile; JURIST news archive]. Convicted [JURIST report] of fraud and obstruction of justice in 2007, Black was sentenced to 78 months in prison [JURIST report] and ordered to pay $125,000 and forfeit another $1 million. In February, the court upheld a district court ruling [JURIST reports] rejecting Black's bid to remain free on bail pending the appeal. The appeals court ruled in February that Black's co-defendants, John Boultbee and Peter Atkinson, could remain free on bail because they had not been convicted of a separate obstruction of justice charge. CBC News has more. The Canadian Press has additional coverage.

The US government originally accused [indictment, PDF] Black of diverting more than $80 million [JURIST report] from Hollinger International and its shareholders during the company's $2.1 billion sale of several hundred Canadian newspapers, but in July 2007 he was found not guilty on separate charges of racketeering, wire fraud, and tax evasion. In August 2007, Black and former Hollinger executives Boultbee, Atkinson and Mark Kipnis filed concurrent motions [JURIST report] requesting either new trials or acquittals after their July convictions. US District Judge Amy St. Eve largely rejected the motions [ruling, PDF; JURIST report], overturning one of Kipnis' mail fraud convictions while affirming all of the other convictions against the four.

[JURIST] The Supreme Court of Missouri ruled [opinion text] Tuesday that four physicians associations do not have standing to challenge the constitutionality of a state law that legalizes midwifery [American College of Nurse-Midwifes backgrounder]. The Missouri legislature passed the provision [text] last year as part of a larger health insurance reform act [HB 818 text, PDF]. The Missouri State Medical Association, the Missouri Association of Osteopathic Physicians and Surgeons, the Missouri Academy of Family Physicians and the St. Louis Metropolitan Medical Society [professional websites] challenged the law on the grounds that physicians could be subject to disciplinary action for aiding unlicensed midwives; the groups also argued that the bill violated the Missouri constitution [Article III text] because it had more than one subject and because the midwifery provision changed the bill's original purpose. Officials for Missouri Midwife Supporters said that the ruling gives families more options and freedom in birth methods, but the Missouri State Medical Association said that the provision "needlessly puts at risk the health of mothers and their babies" [press releases].

Missouri law prohibits physicians from aiding or encouraging an unlicensed person to practice medicine, and such actions can lead to the revocation of a physician's license by the state Board of Registration for the Healing Arts [official website]. Practicing midwifery in Missouri was previously a class-C felony that could be punished by up to seven years in prison, but the ruling allows all certified midwives to legally practice in the state. Certified Nurse Midwives, who have training in both nursing and midwifery, can be licensed in all states but usually must practice in association with a physician. Direct-entry midwives [state legal comparison chart] do not have to have formal training and usually do not have to practice in association with a physician, but they are prohibited in 10 states and not legally regulated in four others. AP has more. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has local coverage.

[JURIST] Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai [BBC profile; JURIST news archive], presidential candidate of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) [party website], Wednesday called for the United Nations and African leaders to lead a settlement process aimed at ending the ongoing violent political crisis in Zimbabwe. Tsvangirai's comments came at a press conference held during a temporary departure [Radio Netherlands report] from the Dutch embassy in Harare, where he has been staying since Sunday after announcing his withdrawal from a presidential run-off election [AFP report] against Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] scheduled for this Friday. In withdrawing from the elections, Tsvangirai cited increasing violence against his party by Mugabe's government and said that he would not ask his supporters to risk their lives by voting in the run-off election. In an editorial published Wednesday in The Guardian, Tsvangirai also urged the UN to send an international peacekeeping force to Zimbabwe to oversee the country's presidential elections and end attacks on MDC politicians and activists by the government. BBC News has more. AP has additional coverage.

Mugabe and Tsvangirai are disputing the results of the recent presidential elections [JURIST news archive]. The MDC has estimated that at least 65 of its members have been killed [BBC report] since the first election in March. Human rights groups suggested that state-sponsored violence would only increase as the second presidential vote drew closer, and in the past few weeks the amount of election-related violence has increased, including the beating [ABC News report], torture [National Post report], and killing [NYT report] of MDC supporters throughout Zimbabwe. Last week, Mugabe's government expelled a UN human rights observer [JURIST news report]. Earlier this month, government forces stopped and detained US and UK diplomats [JURIST report], threatening them and beating one of their drivers.

[JURIST] A Polish appellate court Tuesday overturned the conviction of one riot police officer found guilty for the shooting deaths of nine coal miners during a 1981 protest, but affirmed the convictions of 14 other officers convicted in relation to the same incident. The coal miners were protesting the imposition of martial law [Polish government backgrounder] and the jailing of Solidarity [group website] labor movement leaders by the Communist government of General Wojciech Jaruzelski [official website]. The 15 riot police said that they only shot over the heads of the protesters, but a court sentenced [JURIST report] them in 2007 to between two and one-half years and 11 years in prison. Tuesday's ruling, which cannot be appealed, reduced the 11-year sentence of one officer to six years, increased the sentences of 13 other officers by one year each, and remanded the case of a final officer. AP has more.

The prosecutions were part of a plan for "moral renewal" [Washington Post report] pushed by Polish President Lech Kaczynski and his brother, Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski [official websites], which has sought to purge police and military intelligence agencies and require civil servants, academics and others to disclose whether they served as police informants [JURIST report] prior to 1989. The country's Constitutional Tribunal struck down the proposed disclosure law [JURIST report] in 2007, saying that the government could neither require citizens to make such declarations nor publish a list of alleged Soviet collaborators.

[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website; JURIST news archive] handed down four decisions Wednesday, including Exxon v. Baker [Duke Law backgrounder; JURIST report], in which the Court ruled 5-3 to reduce a punitive damages award to be paid by Exxon Mobil [corporate website] for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill [EPA backgrounder] from $2.5 billion to $500 million. Exxon Mobil and its shipping subsidiary had been ordered to pay punitive damages for the spill of 11 million gallons of crude oil in Prince William Sound, Alaska. The award was larger than the total of all punitive damages awards affirmed by all federal appellate courts in US history. The Court found that punitive damages should be predictable based on the harm done:

Our review of punitive damages today, then, considers not their intersection with the Constitution, but the desirability of regulating them as a common law remedy for which responsibility lies with this Court as a source of judge-made law in the absence of statute. Whatever may be the constitutional significance of the unpredictability of high punitive awards, this feature of happenstance is in tension with the function of the awards as punitive, just because of the implication of unfairness that an eccentrically high punitive verdict carries in a system whose commonly held notion of law rests on a sense of fairness in dealing with one another. Thus, a penalty should be reasonably predictable in its severity, so that even Justice Holmes's "bad man" can look ahead with some ability to know what the stakes are in choosing one course of action or another.

The rule of evolving standards of decency with specific marks on the way to full progress and mature judgment means that resort to the
penalty must be reserved for the worst of crimes and limited in its instances of application. In most cases justice is not better served by terminating the life of the perpetrator rather than confining him and preserving the possibility that he and the system will find ways to allow him to understand the enormity of his offense. Difficulties in administering the penalty to ensure against its arbitrary and capricious application require adherence to a rule reserving its use, at this stage of evolving standards and in cases of crimes against individuals, for crimes that take the life of the victim.

[JURIST] The Italian Senate [official website], the upper house of the country's parliament, approved public safety legislation [text, PDF, in Italian; Senate Act 692 materials, in Italian] Wednesday containing provisions to suspend older trials for nonviolent crimes, including corruption proceedings against Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi [BBC profile; JURIST news archive]. Berlusconi told the Senate in a letter [text, in Italian] last week that the measures would allow the judiciary to consider more important cases and give the government time to introduce judicial reforms. The bill will suspend trials for crimes that occurred before mid-2002 except for those involving the Mafia, violent offenses, workplace accidents and crimes that could be punished by 10 years or more in prison. The government also plans to propose a bill that would protect high-ranking government officials from prosecution during their terms in office. Berlusconi is currently on trial for corruption charges [JURIST report] dating back to 1997, and critics of the amendment have charged that the move is personally motivated since Berlusconi's trial will be among those suspended. BBC has more.

Berlusconi, a media mogul and Italy's richest man, has faced trial on at least six occasions involving charges of false accounting, tax fraud, money laundering, embezzlement, and giving false testimony [JURIST reports]. In October 2007, Italy's highest court of appeal upheld Berlusconi's April 2007 acquittal [JURIST reports] on bribery charges. That trial was initially blocked in 2004 by a bill drafted by Berlusconi ally and later defense lawyer Gaetano Pecorella but went ahead after the bill was struck down as unconstitutional. Berlusconi has said he is innocent and has accused prosecutors of pursuing a political vendetta against him.

[JURIST] Russian police have committed serious rights abuses against suspected rebel militants from Ingushetia [government website, in Russian; BBC backgrounder], including abductions, torture, and killings, according to a Wednesday report [HRW materials; press release] by Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website]. HRW alleged that Russia has failed to hold government agents accountable for abuses and compared Russian tactics against suspected rebels to those used during both Argentina's "Dirty War" [GlobalSecurity Backgrounder; JURIST news archive] and the recent conflict in Chechnya [BBC backgrounder; JURIST news archive]. The group said that Russian abuses had strengthened an increasingly violent militia movement in the region:

These practices evoke, albeit on a far smaller scale, the thousands of enforced disappearances, killings, and acts of torture that plagued Chechnya for more than a decade. They are antagonizing local residents and serve to further destabilize the situation in Ingushetia and more widely in the North Caucasus.

In order to prevent Ingushetia from turning into the full-blown human rights crisis that has characterized Chechnya, prompt and effective measures must be taken by the Russian government to end these human rights violations and hold accountable their perpetrators.

[JURIST] The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) [official website; JURIST news archive] Tuesday announced plans to complete operations a year early and to significantly reduced its budget.  Earlier this year the court announced plans [JURIST report] to operate until 2011, but has been unable to raise the funds necessary to support the plan. The court said that it would still be able to bring those accused to justice despite the cutbacks.  Also Tuesday, the court released a statement [text] saying that it still needs $43.7 million to continue work through the end of 2009. The court was originally scheduled to operate from 2006 to 2009 on a much smaller budget, and financial overruns prompted an April UN audit [audit text, PDF; JURIST report] which eventually cleared the court of mismanagement. The extensions have instead been blamed on long trial delays and frequent appeals. Reuters has more. AFP has additional coverage.

The ECCC was created to try Khmer Rouge [BBC backgrounder] leaders responsible for the country's 1970s genocide, but no Khmer Rouge officials have yet faced justice. In August 2007, the ECCC brought its first charges against Kaing Khek Iev [TrialWatch profile; JURIST report], better known as "Duch," who was in charge of the notorious S-21 prison in Phnom Penh. Former Khmer Rouge official Nuon Chea [GenocideWatch report] is awaiting trial [JURIST report] for charges [statement, PDF] of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Charges have also been brought against former Khmer Rouge head of state Khieu Samphan, who was arrested [JURIST report] in November 2007. In February, Samphan ended his cooperation [JURIST report] with the ECCC.

[JURIST] UK Justice Secretary Jack Straw [official profile] Tuesday held emergency meetings with members of Parliament to discuss possible legislation that would expressly allow anonymous witnesses to testify at some trials.  The recently adopted judicial practice was challenged last week by a Law Lords [government backgrounder, PDF] ruling [Regina v. Davis text, PDF] that it may deny defendants' right to meaningfully challenge the witnesses against them. The judges said that Parliament, rather than the courts, was best suited to balance the rights of the accused with the safety of witnesses:

In these circumstances, while I am very conscious of the problems confronting the authorities which have led them to adopt these measures, in my view it is not open to this House in its judicial capacity to make such a far-reaching inroad into the common law rights of a defendant as would be involved in endorsing the procedure adopted in the present case.

[JURIST] The Supreme Court of Pakistan [official website] on Wednesday agreed to delay a by-election scheduled for Thursday in the district of the leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) [party website] and ex-Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] until the court rules on an appeal of a lower court ruling [JURIST report] that barred Sharif from standing in the by-election. A three-judge panel [cause list] of the Supreme Court heard the government's emergency appeal of the ruling Wednesday, and indicated that it would not deliberate on the case until next Monday, putting on hold elections in Sharif's home district in Lahore until the court resolves the issue. The PML-N's partner in government, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) [party website], instigated the appeal after the PML-N declined to appeal Monday's Lahore High Court (LHC) [official website] ruling against Sharif and rejected the court's decision [Daily Times report]. The Pakistan government said Tuesday that it would file an appeal [JURIST report]. BBC has more.

The Lahore High Court's ruling barred Sharif from the June 26 by-election on the grounds that a prior criminal conviction rendered him ineligible for office. In 2000, Sharif was convicted for his involvement in an attempt to prevent a plane carrying then-army chief and current President Pervez Musharraf [JURIST news archive] from landing in Pakistan during Musharraf's 1999 coup against Sharif's civilian government. Sharif has said that he will not personally challenge Monday's decision since he considers the Supreme Court as currently constituted to be illegitimate. AP has additional coverage.