Recommended readings from the latest legal news:

• Justice O'Connor Says Diverse Court Helps Public Perception of Fairness | AP
• Allies facing tough task to establish rule of law | Daily Telegraph
• Palestinian professor assigned attorneys | UPI
• Reparations Suit Filed In US Court Against S. African Mining Firms | VOA
• Judge upholds Augusta protest law, promises later ruling on Burk permit | AP
• Legislation won't stop fraud completely | UPI
• Republicans begin discussing Owen's judicial nomination as Easter break nears | AP
• British Court's Final Answer in Quiz Show Furor: Guilty | New York Times

See JURIST's Legal News for updates.

Recommended readings from the latest legal news:

• Cuba jails top dissidents | BBC
• Virginia Tech Restores Affirmative Action | AP
• Khmer Rouge Trial May Heal Wounds of Cambodians | VOA
• Police Fire Non-Lethal Bullets at War Protest at Port in Oakland; Nearby Longshoremen Injured | AP
• Watergate files go to University of Texas | UPI
• Supreme Court Rules for Two HMOs on Arbitration | Reuters
• State Farm gets Supreme Court win | Reuters
• Supreme Court Upholds Cross Burning Ban | AP

See JURIST's Legal News for updates.

Duke Law School's Sara Sun Beale warned Monday that the so-called "Feeney Amendment" to the House version of a bill to ban "virtual" child pornography would convert federal sentencing guidelines into a system of mandatory sentences.

The amendment passed by the House last week -- the Feeney Amendment to the "Child Abduction Prevention Act" -- would prohibit judges from taking into account such factors as the defendant’s military service, his exceptional family responsibilities or the fact that this was aberrant behavior. Except for a few factors now defined in the guidelines, the amendment would prohibit sentence reductions and would change the standard for the appellate review of departure decisions.

"It’s important for Congress to take a close look at such a major change in federal sentencing, to make sure it’s not wasting the taxpayers’ money or unduly tying the hands of the courts," Beale says. "This change was slipped in as a last-minute amendment to a bill on an entirely different subject, with no opportunity to solicit the opinion of the courts, the Sentencing Commission or the American Bar Association (ABA).

"The ABA is right in calling for a timeout to allow full consideration before making such a radical change in federal sentencing. Indeed, the Sentencing Commission already has under way a study that would bear directly on this issue. There’s no excuse for such a rush to judgment on such an important issue."

Read more of Beale's comments from Duke News Service, and also see an incisive discussion of the issue by Jeff Cooper of IU-Indianapolis School of Law in a recent posting on his blog Cooped Up.

American wire services are buzzing at this hour with reports of a chemical weapons find at a facilty in Hindiyah, about 100 km south of Baghdad. CNN says that its learned from Pentagon sources that materials there have tested positive for chemical-warfare agents in preliminary testing.

But in a so-far-little-noticed follow-up the Australian Broadcasting Corporation is saying this:

A facility near Baghdad that a US officer had said might finally be "smoking gun" evidence of Iraqi chemical weapons production turned out to contain pesticide, not sarin gas as feared. A military intelligence officer for the US 101st Airborne Division's aviation brigade, Captain Adam Mastrianni, told AFP news agency that comprehensive tests determined the presence of the pesticide compounds. Initial tests had reportedly detected traces of sarin - a powerful toxin that quickly affects the nervous system - after US soldiers guarding the facility near Hindiyah, 100 kilometres south of Baghdad, fell ill. Captain Mastrianni said a "theatre-level chemical testing team" made up of biologists and chemists had finally disproved the preliminary field tests results and established that pesticide was the substance involved.

Read the full ABC report.

The law of war and American treatment of POWs were discussed in a Monday briefing by Special Assistant to the Judge Advocate General for the Army W. Hays Parks and US ambassador for war crimes issues Ambassador Pierre-Richard Prosper. Listen to recorded audio now available from the Defense Department, or watch recorded video from C-SPAN.

Iraqi lawyers in exile working with the London-based Iraqi Jurist Association and the Working Group on Transitional Justice affiliated with the State Department's Future of Iraq Project have prepared a 700-page draft report of proposals for a post-Saddam legal system. The report calls for three forums for criminal justice in post-war Iraq: a special Iraqi court to try major international crimes, including war crimes; ordinary courts to try serious domestic crimes; and a "truth and reconciliation commission" to try crimes by "lesser officials." More details are available from the State Department.

Writing in Monday's Sydney Morning Herald, University of Sydney law professor Donald Rothwell says that a UN sponsored tribunal is crucial to post-war justice in Iraq.

[UPDATED] The US Supreme Court handed down opinions in three cases this morning. Here's a run-down from Supreme Court litigators Goldstein & Howe in DC [with caselinks now available from Cornell]:

1. No. 01-1107, Virginia v. Black (the cross-burning case), affirming in part and vacating in part. Justice O'Connor wrote an opinion for a majority concluding that a state may constitutionally single-out cross-burning with an attempt to intimidate for special sanction, i.e., that cross-burning intimidation can be treated more severely than other forms of intimidation. Justice Souter wrote a dissenting opinion on this point, joined by Justices Kennedy and Ginsburg. Justice O'Connor's opinion also concluded, for a four-Justice plurality, that a particular provision in the Virginia statute, which makes the cross-burning itself prima facie evidence of an intent to intimidate, is facially invalid "at this point," i.e., until the state courts construe it in a manner that avoids the constitutional concern. Justice Scalia filed a concurrence on that point; he does not join the partial statutory "invalidation," perferring instead to remand two of the convictions to the Virginia state court for further statutory construction. Justice Stevens wrote a one-paragraph concurrence joining Justice O'Connor's opinion. Justice Thomas dissented in an opinion that would have upheld the constitutionality of the Virginia statute in its entirety and that would have reinstated the convictions.

2. No. 01-1289, State Farm v. Campbell, 6-3 to reverse the punitive damages verdict, per Justice Kennedy, with dissenting opinions by Justices Scalia, Thomas and Ginsburg.

3. No. 02-215, Pacificare Health Systems v. Book, Justice Scalia for an 8-0 Court reversing the judgment below.

For more analysis and reaction as that becomes available, see JURIST's Legal News.

The 13th annual Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference was held in New York last week. Recorded audio of the sessions - including panels on Total Information Awareness and Patriot Act II and electronic surveillance , plus a closing keynote by Stanford's Larry Lessig - is now available online. Declan McCullogh offers a wrap-up for CNET.

Monday's Harvard Crimson features an editorial endorsement of newly-appointed Harvard Law School dean Elena Kagan.... The Daily at the University of Washington says that administrators at the University of Washington School of Law believe that a computational or reporting error in the School's placement statistics may have caused its precipitous drop from 26th to 45th place in the latest US News & World Report law school rankings... Although leaders at the University of North Carolina's Charlotte campus have expressed interest in establishing a law school, the acting Provost says that planning and set up could take as long as 10 years.

Recommended readings from the latest legal news:

• Serb Leader Pledges Arrest of All War Crimes Suspects Sought by Tribunal | AP
• 3rd Circuit to Hear Ten Commandments Case | Law.com
• Triggerman Provision Weighed in Sniper Case | Washington Post
• Iowa Sued on Behalf of 5 Orphans Taught to Stutter | Washington Post
• Top court to hear arguments against Ryan commutations | Pantagraph.com
• Libraries learn how to protect patrons from Patriot Act | Star-Ledger
• Trial of Palestinian Uprising Leader Opens, His Alleged Deputies Refuse to Testify | AP
• US Prisons, Jails Now Hold 2M Inmates | Washington Post
• Justice Dept. Eases Limits on 5 Prisoners From Cuba | New York Times
• Wolfowitz Says U.S.-Led Coalition May Rule Iraq for 6 Months or More | AP

See JURIST's Legal News for updates.

On April 7, 1969, the US Supreme Court ruled in Stanley v. Georgia that laws prohibiting private possession of obscene materials were unconstitutional.