The UN Security Council meets Friday to receive UNMOVIC Chairman Dr. Han Blix's latest report on weapons inspections pursuant to Security Council Resolution 1441. The UN webcast of the meeting is scheduled to begin at 10:30 AM ET Friday, and JURIST's Paper Chase will carry it live.

ACLU v. Ashcroft[PDF] (March 6, US Third Circuit Court of Appeals). A panel of the Court upheld a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the Child Online Protection Act, restricting minors' access to harmful websites. Judge Leonard Garth wrote: "The District Court did not abuse its discretion in granting the plaintiffs a preliminary injunction on the grounds that COPA, in failing to satisfy strict scrutiny, had no probability of success on the merits. COPA is clearly a content-based restriction on speech. Although it does purport to serve a compelling governmental interest, it is not narrowly tailored, and thus fails strict scrutiny. COPA also fails strict scrutiny because it does not use the least restrictive means to achieve its ends. The breadth of the “harmful to minors” and “commercial purposes” text of COPA, especially in light of applying community standards to a global medium and the burdens on speech created by the statute’s affirmative defenses, as well as the fact that Congress could have, but failed to employ the least restrictive means to accomplish its legitimate goal, persuade us that the District Court did not abuse its discretion in preliminarily enjoining the enforcement of COPA."

UNMOVIC Chairman Dr. Hans Blix discusses the progress and problems of Iraq weapons inspections ahead of Friday's scheduled UN Security Council meeting in this Thursday report from UN Radio . If inspections fail and war comes, however, evacuation plans are in place and Blix's teams can be out in 48 hours.

The National Lawyers Guild announced Thursday that seventy-four law professors have filed an amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs' appeal in the Doe v. Bush war powers lawsuit which was initially dismissed in US District Court in Boston on February 24. Read the brief[PDF] and review War Powers: Towards Unchecked Executive Authority?, a JURIST Forum op-ed from February 25 by Margaret Burnham of Northeastern University School of Law who co-authored the original planitiffs' brief in the case.

Columbia Law School has posted streaming video of two recent lectures on legal aspects of the war on terror delivered as part of its Spring 2003 Columbia Goes to War special lecture series on Public International Law. Watch Jose Alverez consider The UN's War on Terrorism (March 4) and Gerald Neuman asking Should the Laws of War Protect Terrorists? (February 27).

New York monitoring group Human Rights Watch said Thursday in a letter to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that the United States has no legal basis for continuing to hold captured Taliban soldiers at Guantanamo Bay. Read the HRW letter and covering press release. The letter comes a day after UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Sergio Vieira de Mello met with senior US Administration officials in Washington to express his concerns about the US treatment of detainees in the war on terror.

The House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property held a hearing Thursday on "Copyright Piracy Prevention and the Broadcast Flag." Witness statements are now available from the Subcommittee website.

The House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution held a hearing Thursday on the revived Balanced Budget Amendment (H.J. Res. 22). Witness statements are now available form the Subcommittee website.

Remarks by Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Democrat Senator Patrick Leahy (successfully) opposing cloture in the filibuster of the Miguel Estrada nomination Thursday are now available online from his office. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Senator Orrin Hatch has also released a statement.

Wednesday's US Supreme Court rulings upholding the constitutionality of California's "three strikes" sentencing law (Ewing v. California and Lockyer v. Andrade) are dissected today by law professors Jeff Cooper of Indiana University School of Law Indianapolis and David Wagner of Regent University School of Law, both writing on their weblogs.

The Illinois General Assembly Judiciary Committee approved by 8-4 Thursday a controversial bill that would abolish the Illinois death penalty. Illinois took the death penalty spotlight earlier this year when outgoing Governor George Ryan commuted to life imprisonment the death sentences of all the prisoners on Illinois death row. Learn more about HB 213, An Act to Abolish the Death Penalty. The proposed legislation now goes to the full House for Second Reading.

UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw met with reporters at the UN Thursday in advance of Friday's scheduled Security Council meeting on Iraq, where chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix will give an updated report on Iraq's compliance with Security Council Resolution 1441. Watch streaming video of the Foreign Secretary's press conference, now online from the UN.

The Commerce and Justice Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee held a hearing Thursday on projected US Department of Justice spending for fiscal 2004. Attorney General John Ashcroft was scheduled to testify. Earlier Thursday the DOJ auditor released the Department's 2002 Performance and Accountability Report.

President Bush reacted harshly Thursday to the defeat of the cloture motion to stop the Democratic filibuster on the judicial nomination of Miguel Estrada. "Miguel Estrada is a well-qualified nominee to the U.S. Court of Appeals who has been waiting nearly two years for an up or down vote in the United States Senate. The decision today by 44 Senators to continue to filibuster and block a vote on this nomination is a disgrace," he said. Read the complete statement by the President and review the full breakdown of the roll-call vote now online from the US Senate.

The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing Wednesday on "The War Against Terrorism: Working Together to Protect America." Witnesses included Attorney General John Ashcroft, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and FBI Director Robert Mueller. Streaming video of the full hearing and prepared statements of the witnesses and Chairman Senator Orrin Hatch are now available from the Committee.

Mary Jo White, the former US District Attorney for the Southern District of New York who led prosecutions in a string of high-profile terrorism cases between 1993 and 2002, discussed civil rights and the fight against terrorism February 28 as part of the Harvard Law School Saturday School program. Streaming video of her talk is now available from HLS.

Lawrence Solum of Loyola Law School Los Angeles reflects on "Just War" theory and Iraq, and also posts his regular Thursday run-down of law school faculty workshops.

Tung Yin of the University of Iowa College of Law has some thoughts on splitting the 9th Circuit.

Senate Republicans Thursday fell five votes short (55 of the requisite 60) of invoking cloture on the Democratic filibuster of the nomination of Miguel Estrada to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. Learn more about cloture from the US Senate.

Reviving an initiative it sustained for over thirty years between 1938 and 1969, Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law has announced that it will offer evening classes beginning in the fall of 2004. The SMU Daily Campus has the story, and SMU Law School provides a press release.

Tucson police have ruled Monday's death of University of Arizona Rogers College of Law student Susan Barber a homicide. The Arizona Daily Wildcat has details.

Law students at the University of Texas School of Law are bracing themselves for the possibility of fewer class sections, reduced library hours and limited building maintenance as the administration there struggles with University and state budget cuts. The Daily Texan reports.

Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Democrat Senator Patrick Leahy discussed human rights and foreign policy Tuesday at Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville. The Louisville Cardinal has more.

JURIST's Paper Chase will be coming back to life over the course of Thursday. Most of the format changes have been made and the technical bugs worked out, but your continued patience is appreciated.

On March 6, 1857, the US Supreme Court announced its landmark decision in Dred Scott v. Sanford, holding that blacks - slaves as well as free - were not and could never become citizens of the United States, and that the 1820 Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional. Learn more about the Dred Scott case from Washington University in St. Louis (the city where Dred Scott initially filed his suit for freedom and had his case first tried). Review a selection of contemporary newspaper editorials reacting to the decision.