Unapproved Sunni list of names for Iraqi constitution committee could pose problem News
Unapproved Sunni list of names for Iraqi constitution committee could pose problem

[JURIST] Having last week reached a deal [JURIST report] on Sunni representation on the parliamentary committee to draft the Iraqi constitution [JURIST news archive], Iraqi politicians are now debating over who exactly should be named to the new seats. Sunni leaders have submitted a list of 15 candidates for the positions with full voting rights, but without getting support for the 15 from a larger group of Sunnis, as the committee had wanted. A spokesman for the committee that submitted the list of 15 said there's "no need" for such wide approval and doing so would only "complicate things". A new consitution must be finished by August 15, a deadline which some say should be postponed [JURIST report]. AP has more.

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.