Haiti Aristide overthrow redress petition [IACHR] News
Haiti Aristide overthrow redress petition [IACHR]

Petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR); Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti,
the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School, and TransAfrica Forum, February 2, 2006 [alleging that the US violated Haitian sovereignty by illegally preventing the flow of resources into Haiti in an attempt to destabilize the regime of former President Aristide and eventually overthrow and kidnap him in 2004, and seeking various forms of declaratory relief]. Excerpt:

This petition demonstrates that the IGH, the United States, and the Dominican Republic violated the rights of the Haitian people through a long-term, systematic plan that included: a) undermining the democratically elected Haitian government through a development-assistance embargo and by supporting both unarmed and armed opposition groups; b) overthrowing the democratically elected Haitian government and kidnapping its President in February 2004; and c) replacing it with a government with no constitutional or electoral legitimacy.

Read the full text of the letter [PDF]. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

THIS DAY @ LAW

First US life insurance company incorporated

On January 11, 1759, America's first life insurance company was incorporated in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Corporation for Relief of Poor and Distressed Widows and Children of Presbyterian Ministers was established by Presbyterians to support the families of their ministers. In 1988, the company's name was changed to the Presbyterian Ministers' Fund. The company later became Covenant Life Insurance Company before being acquired by Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company in 2002. Read a history of the Presbyterian Ministers' Fund from the Pennsylvania Historical Society.

Treaty ended Anglo-American claims, courts in China

On January 11, 1943, the United States and Great Britain relinquished by treaty their extraterritorial claims in China. This abandonment effectively ended the jurisdiction of the extraterritorial United States Court for China (established 1906) and the British Supreme Court in China. Read more about the United States Court for China, which one scholar has called "probably the strangest federal tribunal ever constituted by Congress," in a short online history of the US Ninth Circuit.