Austria chancellor to push for referenda on Lisbon Treaty News
Austria chancellor to push for referenda on Lisbon Treaty

[JURIST] Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer [official website] promised in an open letter [text, in German; SPÖ statement, in German] Thursday that he would push for Austria to hold national referenda in deciding whether to accept future modifications of the EU reform treaty [JURIST news archive], properly known as the Treaty of Lisbon [PDF text; website]. The announcement came two weeks after Irish voters rejected [JURIST report] the reform treaty in a referendum. A June European Commission Eurobarometer report [PDF text] found that Austrian citizens are among those least satisfied with EU membership. Bloomberg has more.

In April, the upper house of the Austrian parliament [official website, in German] voted 151-27 [press materials, in German; JURIST report] to approve the treaty. The treaty must be ratified by all 27 EU member states before it can take effect, though each country may choose the method of ratification. Leaders from the 27 countries signed the reform treaty [JURIST report] last December, and 14 countries have ratified the document [JURIST news archive]. In 2005, an earlier draft for a European constitution [JURIST news archive] failed when voters in France and the Netherlands [JURIST reports] rejected the proposal in national referenda.

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.