CNN is reporting that President Bush has signed an Executive Order adding SARS - Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome - to the list of diseases for which a person can be quarantined under federal law. The actual Order is not yet online from the White House, but should shortly be available here. The Order presumably extends the last revised list of quarantinable communicable diseases set out in Executive Order 12452, issued by President Ronald Reagan in 1983: "Cholera or suspected Cholera, Diphtheria, infectious Tuberculosis, Plague, suspected Smallpox, Yellow Fever, and suspected Viral Hemorrhagic Fevers (Lassa, Marburg, Ebola, Congo-Crimean, and others not yet isolated or named)."

In an Order[PDF] Friday in the ongoing pre-trial proceedings in the case of suspected terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui, US District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema said she was "disturbed by the extent to which the United States' intelligence officials have classified the pleadings, orders and memorandum opinions in this case" and agreed "with the defendant’s skepticism of the Government’s ability to prosecute this case in open court in light of the shroud of secrecy under which it seeks to proceed." She therefore directed that the Government reply to Moussaoui's requests for unclassified, unredacted copies of a prior hearing transcript and a Memorandum Opinion that he had previously only had access to in heavily-redacted form.

Recommended readings from the latest legal news:

• Convictions Upheld in '93 WTC Bombing | AP
• Negotiators approve flag compromise | Atlanta Journal-Constitution
• Turkish court upholds torture verdict | BBC
• Judge backs gay equal rights | BBC
• PA refuses to list websites it banned | AP

See JURIST's Legal News for updates.

The US Second Circuit Court of Appeals Friday upheld the convictions of Ramzi Yousef and others in connection with the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and a conspiracy to bomb US commercial airliners in South East Asia. The court rejected appellants' contention that admission of their post-arrest statements into evidence denied them a fair trial. Review US v. Yousef[PDF].

Emory-based CALI legal technologist Elmer Masters notes that Emory Law School has stopped posting US Eleventh Circuit cases now that the Eleventh Circuit itself is making their rulings available online in a user-friendly format.

This brings the curtain down on a project that ran for nearly nine years and initially included opinions for 6 courts. Emory was among a handful of law schools that began posting Circuit court cases in the summer and fall of 1994. By late 1994 all of the Circuit Courts of Appeal were supplying reported cases to law schools who hosted websites for the courts. Now, nearly nine years later, all of the circuits have their opinions available on the web at their own sites, though a number of schools including Touro Law Center and Pace Law School (2nd), Villanova School of Law (3rd), and Washburn School of Law Library (10th) continue to post new cases and maintain archives.

The legal academy, and the legal community at large, owe the good folks at Emory Law School sincere thanks for making so much appellate caselaw freely and quickly available online for so many years. The end of their project is a testament to their vision and leadership. Now, as Elmer says, if someone would just "come up with RSS feeds of reported cases"!

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has just posted a new website on human rights and disability, highlighting relevant international instruments, a study on human rights and disability issues conducted with the University of Galway in Ireland, progress on a proposed new international Convention "to protect and promote the rights and dignity of persons with disabilities," recent developments, statements and more.

In a new paper on SSRN, Gregory Alexander of Cornell Law School considers Germany's protection of property as a fundamental right. From the abstract:

This article examines an apparent paradox in comparative constitutional law. Property rights are not treated as a fundamental right in American constitutional law; they are, however, under the Basic Law (i.e., constitution) of Germany, a social-welfare state that otherwise gives less weight to property. The article uses this apparent paradox as a vehicle for considering the different reasons why constitutions protect property. It explains the difference between the German and American constitutional treatment of property on the basis of the quite different approaches taken in the two systems to the purposes of constitutional protection of property.

Read the full text on SSRN.

The day after Harvard University President Lawrence Summers announced the next Dean of Harvard Law School, the Harvard Law Record simply says It's Kagan. There's more coverage of Kagan's appointment in Friday's Harvard Crimson. But a running - and doubtless entirely unscientific - poll on the Record website also reports (at this hour) that most respondents feel that she wasn't the best choice for Dean.... With the 2004 US News & World Report rankings now out, law schools like George Mason University School of Law are puffing. There'll be lots more of this from many quarters in the next week or so.... The National Law Journal has a story on Ave Maria School of Law in Ann Arbor, which recently received provisional accreditation from the ABA.

Recommended readings from the latest legal news:

• Supreme Court Splits, Allows Execution of Man Who Was 17 When He Killed Two | AP
• Iraqi lawyer's tip led to rescue of POW | USA Today
• A New Push to Grant Gun Industry Immunity From Suits | New York Times
• Croatian Court: Ex-Army Chief Too Ill to Receive U.N. Indictment | AP
• Judges Struggle on Campaign Finance | Washington Post
• Terrorism Task Force Detains an American Without Charges | New York Times
• Civil Liberties Group Urges Florida to Recall AIDS Pamphlets With Biblical Passages | AP
• New York's Death Penalty Sentencing Upheld | Law.com
• State State Enters Fray on Access to Priests' Files | Washington Post
• Bill in Oregon Bill in Oregon seeks to jail war protesters as terrorists | Reuters
• Parents, Not Child, May Seek Damages Over In-Vitro Fertilization | Law.com
• News Groups Want Terror Case Documents | New York Times
• King's Anti-War Views Remembered on Death Anniversary | AP
• Trials begin for Cuban dissidents | AP
• Role of the Media in Afghan State-Building: The Case of the Afghan Constitution | RFE/RL

See JURIST's Legal News for updates.

Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968. Pay a virtual visit to The King Center in Atlanta.