A United Nations Commission on Human Rights Special Rapporteur said Wednesday that Tuesday's US DC Circuit Court of Appeals ruling denying relief on jurisdictional grounds to Afghan war detainees held outside the US at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had "far reaching" implications and could be a "dangerous precedent." Dato' Param Cumaraswamy, the Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, said the decision

appears to imply that a government of a sovereign State could lease a piece of land from a neighboring State, set up a detention camp, fully operate and control it, arrest suspects of terrorism from other jurisdictions, send them to this camp, deny them their legal rights -- including principles of due process generally granted to its own citizens -- on grounds that the camp is physically outside its jurisdiction. By such conduct, the Government of the United States, in this case, will be seen as systematically evading application of domestic and international law so as to deny these suspects their legal rights. Detention without trial offends the first principle of the rule of law.

Read the Special Rapporteur's full statement on the ruling.

J. Clay Smith of Howard University School of Law spoke Wednesday at Harvard Law School on his forthcoming book Supreme Justice, chronicling the life of late US Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Recorded video is now online from the Harvard Law School Saturday School program.

Louis Henkin of Columbia Law School spoke Wednesday in the latest of Columbia Law's Spring 2003 lecture series Columbia Goes to War. Watch recorded video of Human Rights in the Age of Terrorism - and What About Sovereignty? .

The UN Security Council met Wednesday afternoon to allow more countries not members of the Council to present their views on the Iraq situation. Recorded video of the individual country statements is now available from the UN, along with video of the response by Iraq .

UPDATE [10:50 PM ET]: The UN has now posted a printed summary of Wednesday's session.

Early on Wednesday the US Supreme Court, per Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, granted a temporary stay of a US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals judgment[PDF] that would have required Greek Olympic Airways to pay $1.4 million to the heirs of an asthmatic man who had died after inhaling second hand smoke on a long international flight. CNN has more. The stay Order is not yet available online.

Reuters reports that the US Supreme Court has issued a stay of execution for Delma Banks, scheduled to be executed by lethal injection Wednesday. The stay represents a preliminary legal victory for ex-FBI Director William Sessions, several former federal appeals judges and a former US DA for Chicago who had jointly filed an amicus brief[PDF] with the Court - previously reported in JURIST's Paper Chase - asking it to review Banks' case because of "uncured constitutional errors in the process through which he [Banks] was convicted and sentenced" which were "typical of those that have undermined public confidence in the fairness of our capital punishment system." Tonight's stay will give the Court time to consider whether it will actually take the case.

The US Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments Wednesday in Interactive Digital v. St. Louis County, in which video software producers submit that a county ban on the sale of violent video games to minors should be overturned as an unconstitutional infringement of free speech. Recorded audio of the oral arguments is now available from the Eighth Circuit (ironically for a case on multimedia, the audio pick-up on this recording is generally poor, but some exchanges are easily made out).

The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on judicial nominations Wednesday. Opening statements from Chairman Senator Orrin Hatch and Ranking Member Senator Patrick Leahy are now available online.

Canadian Supreme Court Justice Ian Binnie delivered a lecture entitled Technology and the Courts: The Incomprehensible Chasing the Unteachable? at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law on February 26. Watch recorded video , now online from U of T's Center for Innovation Law and Policy.

University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein thinks it probably is, for most people. Read his op-ed from Tuesday's Los Angeles Times, now available (without registration or pop-ups!) from the University of Chicago Law School.

At a press conference in London Wednesday, UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said that the UK was discussing further amendments to the second draft UN Security Council resolution[PDF] (co-sponsored by the US and Spain) it had introduced at the Security Council on March 7, and was circulating six tests for Iraqi compliance:

• a statement by Saddam Hussein admitting that he has concealed weapons of mass destruction, but will no longer produce or retain weapons of mass destruction;
• deliver at least 30 scientists for interview outside Iraq, with their families;
• surrender all anthrax, or credible evidence of destruction;
• complete the destruction of all Al Samoud missiles;
• account for all unmanned aerial vehicles, including details of any testing of sparying devices for chemical and biological weapons;
• surrender all mobile chemcial and biological production facilities.

Read the full text of the Foreign Secretary's statement, now online from the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

The Lawyers Committee for Human Rights issued an updated report Tuesday on what it described as the steadily-eroding state of civil liberties and human rights in the United States over the 18 months that have passed since the attacks of September 11. LCHR President Michael Posner said in a press release that "In the last six months in particular, the executive branch has taken a series of measures to consolidate its authority and these actions have, in some cases, prevented Congress and the courts from playing their safeguarding roles. In other cases, Congress and the judiciary have been too submissive or deferential.” Read the full text of Imbalance of Powers[PDF], covering developments relevant to open government; the right to privacy; the treatment of immigrants, refugees and minorities; and security detainees and the criminal justice system.

In a statement Wednesday, Amnesty International said that Tuesday's federal appeal court ruling denying on jurisdictional grounds any legal relief to Afghan war detainees held by the US at Guanatanamo Bay, Cuba (and reported previously in JURIST's Paper Chase) "will cause further damage to the international reputation of the USA and to fundamental human rights standards agreed to across the world." Read the AI press release. In a related development, Amnesty welcomed Tuesday's US District Court ruling allowing accused "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla access to a lawyer (also reported here previously), but said it represented only "the smallest step forward for justice in this case and others in the war on terrorism."

The US Senate website indicates that a cloture vote on the nomination of Miguel Estrada to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals has been scheduled for tomorrow (Thursday), March 13. The previous cloture motion made on March 6 was defeated 55-44.

Wednesday on SSRN:

Retaining Judicial Authority: A Preliminary Inquiry on the Dominion of American Judges
by Larry Cara Backer of the Pennsylvania State University - Dickinson School of Law
From the Abstract: "Why do the people and institutions of democratic states, and in particular those of the United States, obey judges? This article examines the foundations of judicial authority in the United States. This authority is grounded on principles of dominance derived from the organization of institutional religion. The judge in Western states asserts authority on the same basis as the priest - but not the priest as conventionally understood. Rather, the authority of the judge in modern Western democratic states is better understood when viewed through the analytical lens of priestly function developed in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Focusing on the American Supreme Court, this paper examines the manner in which high court judges have successfully internalized the characteristics of Nietzsche - Paul and his priestly caste within the religion of Western constitutionalism."

Harvard Law School students attending a forum Tuesday with Harvard University President Lawrence Summers accused him of ignoring them in the Law School's current Dean Search. More from the Harvard Crimson. AP also reports. HLS Federalist Society blogger Adam White was there....

The National Rifle Association (NRA) has announced that its NRA Foundation has pledged $1 million to the George Mason University School of Law to establish and endow the Patrick Henry Professorship of Constitutional Law and the Second Amendment. The Washington Times has more....

Steven Bahls, dean of Ohio's Capital University School of Law, is stepping down to become president of Augustana College in Rock Island, Ill. Read the law school press release....

The University of Mexico School of Law hosted a panel discussion Tuesday on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The UNM Daily Lobo reports....

The European Court of Human Rights ruled Wednesday that Turkey had violated the rights of captured Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan by delaying his trial and had not tried him before an independent and impartial tribunal. Read the ECHR press release summarizing the judgment.

Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, a democratic reformer who played a decisive role in sending former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to The Hague for trial on war crimes, was assassinated Wednesday in front of government offices in Belgrade. More from the BBC. The news is not yet official - the Serbian Government website is still only saying that Djindic was "injured."

UPDATE [11:10 AM ET]: The Serbian Government website is now acknowledging the assassination, saying: "This criminal act is a clear attempt to put an end to the development and democratisation of Serbia and plunge it into isolation once again and was carried out by those who have been trying over the past few years to do so through various murders and assassinations." Radio B-92 in Belgrade is posting English-langauge updates on the situation and reactions as they come in.

On March 12, 1993, Janet Reno was sworn in an as the first female US Attorney General. Learn more about Janet Reno from the US Department of Justice Attorney General's website as it stood on November 9, 2000.