NASA Tuesday released an amended version of the Charter for the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, reflecting changes in personnel and support staffing designed to better protect its independence. Read the NASA press release, the amended Board Charter[PDF], and a confirmatory letter[PDF] from NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe to Board Chairman Admiral Harold W. Gehman, Jr..

The UN Security Council continued debate Tuesday on Iraq's compliance with Resolution 1441, hearing from representatives of approximately twenty countries, plus the Permanent Observer of the League of Arab States. Details, a summary of statements and streaming video of the session are available from the United Nations. Debate is scheduled to resume at 10 AM ET Wednesday - JURIST will carry the proceedings live.

New and interesting papers on SSRN Tuesday included Protecting Human Rights in a Democracy: What Role for the Courts?, by Michael Perry of Wake Forest University School of Law; Bargains in the Information Marketplace: The Use of Government Subsidies to Regulate New Media by Ellen Goodman of Rutgers School of Law-Camden; and Exporting American Dreams:Thurgood Marshall and the Constitution of Kenya, by Mary Dudziak of USC Law School.

New and interesting Opinions issued Tuesday included Remsburg v. Docusearch, an online stalking and ID theft ruling from the Supreme Court of New Hampshire; Nordyke v. King, a Ninth Circuit US Court of Appeals panel holding on First and Second Amendment constitutionality of a Alameda County California ordinance prohibiting possession of firearms on county property; and Hoxha v. Ashcroft, another Ninth Circuit ruling overturning a Board of Immigration Appeals finding that a Kosovar Albanian student who overstayed his US visa was ineligible for asylum.

Three Kosovo Albanians who were guards at a KLA prison camp in Kosovo arrived at The Hague Tuesday for trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Read the indictment against them, originally issued on January 24 but only unsealed Tuesday. The ICTY issued a press release, including a statement by ICTY Prosecutor Carla del Ponte in which she lambasted NATO KFOR security forces in Kosovo for allowing a fourth indictee to escape: "The fourth co-accused, Fatmir Limaj, was able to leave Kosovo, last Friday February 14th, on a regular flight on a business trip. He was not on the run, he was not in hiding, he simply booked a flight ticket, and, as any ordinary citizen, was allowed to board his flight and leave. It was that easy. And it is outrageous. It escapes all understanding that Fatmir Limaj, a member of Parliament, a public figure, could be allowed to leave Kosovo with such ease, two and a half weeks after KFOR had been in possession of the Indictment and the arrest warrant."

UPDATE: As you may have seen on JURIST's Breaking Legal News, VOA is now reporting that the fourth Kosovo Albanian indictee has surrendered to Austrian authorities after learning of the arrests of his three co-indictees.

Paul Berman of the University of Connecticut School of Law speaks Tuesday at a faculty workshop at Duke Law School on the collision between global interconnection and national sovereignty in the age of cyberspace. Read an abstract and download the text of his paper The Globalization of Jurisdiction.

A coalition of civil liberties and Arab American groups asked the US Supreme Court Tuesday to review a November ruling by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Review Court that authorized the US Department of Justice to expand its surveillance powers under the USA PATRIOT Act. Read the petition for certiorari[PDF].

William Donaldson was sworn in Tuesday as the new Chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, succeeding Harvey Pitt. Review remarks by President Bush and Chairman Donaldson at the White House ceremony.

Today is the deadline for filing amicus briefs in the University of Michigan affirmative action cases, scheduled for oral argument before the Supreme Court on April 1. Harvard University announced Monday that it and seven other major universities (Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Brown, Penn, Chicago, and Duke) had joined in filing an amicus brief in support of the affirmative action admissions policies applied by the University of Michigan Law School and the undergraduate College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. Read the Harvard amicus brief[PDF]. Get more information on the Michigan cases from the University of Michigan (which hosts an online collection of amicus briefs supporting affirmative action admissions) and the Center for Individual Rights (collecting amicus briefs opposing affirmative action admissions).

UPDATE: It now looks like last-minute amicus filers have one more day, as Washington DC litigators Goldstein & Howe report this morning that the Supreme Court is closed today (due to snow) and that therefore, per the Supreme Court Rules, today does not count as a day on which filings are due.

On February 18, 1970, the jury rendered its verdicts in the trial of the Chicago Seven, charged in connection with violence that had erupted at the 1968 Democratic Convention. The jury acquitted all defendants on conspiracy, while finding five guilty of intent to incite a riot while crossing state lines. Learn more on JURIST about the trial of the Chicago Seven from Douglas Linder of the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law.