Ukraine court blocks election decree News
Ukraine court blocks election decree

[JURIST] A Kiev court Saturday blocked a decree by Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko [official website] dissolving parliament and directing parliamentary elections in the wake of the collapse of the governing coalition. The Kiev District Court made the ruling against the elections in response to a lawsuit brought by Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko [personal website] against Yushchenko and Ukraine's Central Election Commission (CEC) [official website] claiming that the election was called earlier than indicated by law. Media sources Sunday quoted Kiev Prosecutor Yevheniy Blazhyvsky as saying that the lower court judge who first ordered a block on Friday would be charged with knowingly commiting an unlawful act. RIA Novosti has more.

Ukraine's leadership is seriously divided in the wake of the 2004 Orange Revolution [backgrounder] that brought Yushchenko to power as president. The ambitious and highly populist Tymoshenko was originally a Yushchenko ally, but more recently has become disaffected, leading to the collapse of the government [press release] over disagreements on a variety of domestic and international issues.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, murdered by Henry II's knights

On December 29, 1170, Archbishop Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by knights acting in the name of Henry II.

Becket and Henry had been entangled in a power struggle over, among other things, criminal jurisdiction over clergy. Read a contemporary account of the murder of Thomas Becket.

Texas attains US statehood

On December 29, 1845, Texas became the twenty-eighth state to join the United States of America when US President James K. Polk signed the Ordinance of Annexation. Texas had a complicated path to statehood because it had formerly been part of Mexico and then an independent republic. The US Congress passed the Annexation of the Republic of Texas Joint Resolution on March 1, 1845. Voters in Texas then approved the Ordinance of Annexation in October, before it was approved by the US Congress and signed into law by President Polk on this day in 1845. The US Supreme Court later ruled in Texas v. White that, despite its unique path to statehood, Texas did not have the right to secede from the union.