Relatives of decedents who participated in UCLA's Willed Body Program filed suit against the university Monday. The lawsuit is the latest blow to the program following Sunday's arrest of program director Henry Reid for allegedly selling cadaver parts. According to AP, the arrest, reported over the weekend on JURIST's Paper Chase, came after a month-long investigation into the program following a suit from Ernest V. Nelson who claimed to have purchased a cadaver part in his role as "middleman" between the program and corporate buyers. In the suit filed today, plaintiffs claim to have received documents from the university stating that the bodies would not be sold. UCLA issued a press release today saying it was "deeply sorry" for "any illegal commercialization."

Following up on a story previewed this morning on JURIST's Paper Chase, the BBC is reporting that the House of Lords voted 216 votes to 183 this evening to divert into a special committee for further study the Blair government's constitutional reform legislation that would have replaced the current law lords by a new UK Supreme Court and would have abolished the positon of Lord Chancellor. The vote is a major blow to the government and may mean the end of the bill, although it remains technically possible for the government to redraft the reforms or even invoke special powers to force through the legislation without Lords approval. The BBC now offers this video report.

Multnomah County judge Dale Koch has refused to issue a temporary restraining order that would have blocked the Oregon county from issuing marriage licenses to homosexual couples. In denying the motion, Judge Koch found that the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that the state would incur "irreparable harm" from allowing the unions to take place prior to a trial on the merits. KGW.com has more (subscription required).

The Federal Reserve has cleared the way for a merger between Bank of America and FleetBoston Financial Corp., according to AP. Today's move, which marked the final regulatory challenge before the shareholders of both companies have the chance to finalize the action, would create the nation's third largest bank with 5700 branches and almost $1 trillion in assets. The Federal Reserve's order authorizing the merger was approved unanimously and is available here [PDF].

WNBC-TV in New York City is reporting that a gay couple were married in Asbury Park New Jersey City Hall late Monday afternoon after city officials determined that New Jersey law does not explicitly ban granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

A Pennsylvania state court ruled Monday that data on sex offenders gathered under the state Megan's Law statute could not be disclosed to state auditors. State Auditor General Robert P. Casey Jr. had sought the records as part of a performance audit of the PA legislation, but the Commonwealth Court said that although Megan's Law required disclosure of information about "sexually-violent predators" it did not authorize the public release of "investigative" data about other offenders. Read the ruling here [PDF]. Casey issued a press release vowing to take the matter to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. AP has more.

A study released Monday by the US Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform ranking states for "legal fairness" to business on the basis of their liability systems, judged by such things as controls on plaintiff's attorneys and limits on "high damage awards in frivolous cases", puts Delaware at the top of the list and Mississippi at the bottom. The study, the latest in an annual series, was based on interviews with 1400 senior attorneys. Read the US Chamber of Commerce press release and review the full text of the 2004 State Liability Systems Ranking Study. The detailed state rankings list is here.

Former Haitian Chief Justice Boniface Alexandre was formally installed as the new President of Haiti today at a ceremony at the heavily-guarded Presidential palace. Alexandre, next in line to the Presidency in the succession sequence established under Article 149 of the 1987 Constitution of Haiti, took office after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's departure February 29. In remarks, Alexandre called for national reconcilation and new elections. Reuters has more. The changeover is not yet reflected on the official website of the Haitian Presidency (in French).

The chief prosecutor for the new UN Special Court for Sierra Leone, which is set to open its first session this week, blamed Libya Monday for recent West African wars that he said were the by-products of Libyan efforts to destabilize the region to Libya's benefit. Libya is know to have trained a number of rebel leaders active in Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Ivory Coast, and elsewhere. David Crane made the accusations in an interview with the BBC, and his comments may portend a series of trials in the Sierra Leone court that could have serious consequences for Libya just as it is trying to improve its international standing and relations with Western democracies. BBC News has more.

Senator Edward Kennedy, a senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, called upon the US Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in a letter released Monday to consider whether President Bush's February 20 recess appointment of former Alabama Attorney General William Pryor to the Court was constitutional. The appointment came at the end of a holiday weekend, but Kennedy suggested that under the Constitution, a recess appointment can only be made "at the end of a Congress or the recess between the annual sessions of Congress." Article II, s.2 of the US Constitution reads in its operative part, "The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the end of their next Session." In an accompanying memo Kennedy noted that "No other Article III judge in the nation's history has ever received a recess appointment during a brief holiday period in the midst of a session of Congress." A White House spokeman said the recess appointment had been thoroughly reviewed and was consistent with the practice of previous administrations, both Republican and Democratic. AP has more. UC Hastings law professor Vikram Amar offers a perspective on judicial recess appointments in a recent FindLaw column

Speaking Monday to French radio and to reporters at a news conference in Bangui, capital of the Central African Republic, Haiti's deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide insisted that he remains the constitutional, democratically-elected President of Haiti and was forced to leave the country against his will. He called for peaceful resistance against the "occupation" of his country. Listen to a clip of Aristide's comments to France's RTL Radio (in French). VOA has more. A US spokesman declined to comment, saying simply that Aristide had resigned. Six people were killed yesterday when gunfire broke out at an anti-Aristide demonstration; a US Marine spokesman said Monday that Marines had killed one person who was firing them and on demonstrators in front of the Presidential Palace.

UPDATE: A late report from Reuters quotes Aristide lawyer Gilbert Collard as saying that in the next few days Collard and an American lawyer will file lawsuits in the US and France suing those two countries for kidnapping Aristide.

UPDATE-2: Aristide was interviewed in English earlier today by the radio program Democracy Now. Read the transcript, or listen to the MP3 recorded audio.

A Serbian war crimes suspect who was to have been tried starting Tuesday in the first major case before Serbia's own war crimes tribunal died Monday of injuries following an apparent suicide attempt last month in which he leapt from a hospital window. Mirko Vojinovic was a member of a Serb paramilitary unit whose members are accused of killing 200 Croat prisoners at a pig farm near Vukovar in 1991. AP has more. Meanwhile, two former Croat generals accused of atrocities againt ethnic Serbs in 1995 were publicly indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at The Hague. The ICTY has issued a press release detailing the charges. Again, AP has more.

Seattle seemed set Monday to become the next major front in the battle for same-sex marriage rights as Mayor Greg Nickels said over the weekend he would recognize marriages of same-sex city employees performed elsewhere, and six same-sex couples prepared to file a lawsuit arguing that Washington State's marriage law limiting marriage to a man and a woman is unconstitutional. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has more.

UPDATE: AP has filed this late report on the filing of the Seattle same-sex lawsuit and Mayor Greg Nickels' Monday issuance of an executive order recognizing the same-sex marriages of city employees that were conducted elsewhere. Mayor Nickels' office has issued this press release. Seattle's KOMO-TV has more.

UPDATE-2: The complaint filed by same-sex couples in their lawsuit to have their right to marry recognized in Washington State is now online from FindLaw here.

US Attorney General John Ashcroft, still in intensive care at George Washington University Hospital for treatment of severe gallstone pancreatitis, has canceled his official schedule for the coming week according to a Justice Department spokesman. AP has more. As reported Saturday on JURIST's Paper Chase, Ashcroft could be in hospital for anywhere from a few more days to a month or more; in his absence, his general duties have devolved to Deputy Attorney General James Comey.

A federal judge has ruled that the anti-technology writings of Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski are held by the US government for the benefit of his victims, and that he has no right to donate them to the University of Michigan for research. Kaczynski, who holds advanced math degrees from Michigan, is currently serving a life sentence at a federal prison in Colorado. The ruling was handed down Friday and is now available here [PDF]. AP has more.

The US Supreme Court Monday ruled that so-called "testimonial" evidence of a witness - for example, from a preliminary hearing, a grand jury proceeding, a former trial, or police interrogations - cannot under the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment be entered into evidence at a trial unless the witness is unavailable and the defendant had a prior opportunity for cross-examination. The decision overules the Supreme Court's holding in Ohio v. Roberts (1980). Read Crawford v. Washington [PDF]. Bloomberg has more. In a second ruling issued today, the Court held that under the Sixth Amendment a waiver of an accused's right to counsel is satisfied when the trial court informs the accused of the nature of the charges against him, of his right to be counseled regarding his plea, and of the range of allowable punishments attendant upon the entry of a guilty plea. Overturning a finding of the Iowa Supreme Court, the court said Sixth Amendment does not mandate that the defendant be advised that waiving counsel’s assistance in deciding whether to plead guilty (1) entails the risk that a viable defense will be overlooked and (2) deprives him of the opportunity to obtain an independent opinion on whether, under the facts and applicable law, it is wise to plead guilty. Read Iowa v. Tovar [PDF]. AP has more.

The Court today also allowed the European Commission to make an oral argument as amicus curiae in an upcoming case between Intel Corporation and Advanced Micro Systems, and turned down a range of certiorari petitions (see, for instance, this AP story). The full Order List is now online here [PDF].

The full English text of the Transitional Administrative Law, the new Iraqi interim constitution, is now online from the Coalition Provisional Authority. The Coalition also highlights the constitutional provisions protecting basic rights.

The UK House of Lords, a judicial panel of which is also the United Kingdom's highest court, is headed for a showdown with the Blair government Monday evening on a controversial constitutional reform package. The Lords have threatened to take the package - which features the replacement of the law lords by a new UK Supreme Court, the abolition of the ancient office of the Lord Chancellor, and making judges fully independent from Parliament - and shuttle it off to a special select committee of the Lords for further study, which will seriously disrupt the government's legislative agenda and in practice probably kill the bill. Opponents of the legislation - including the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf - say that the measure is being rushed through too quickly without enough consideration of its consequences and implications. Lord Woolf spoke out against the reforms over the weekend on BBC Radio, and last Wednesday during a speech at Cambridge University, as previously reported by JURIST's Paper Chase. The present Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, defends the changes in this BBC interview. A press release from the UK Department of Constitutional Affairs on the UK Supreme Court proposal is here. BBC News has more. The House of Lords debate over the Constitutional Reform Bill will be broadcast live here.

Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, told an IAEA Board of Governors meeting in Vienna today that Iran and Libya had violated their obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The two countries have recently come under close international scrutiny for their nuclear programs; Iran's has been voluntarily made subject to a new international protocol, Libya is also signing a new agreement to adhere to international nuclear control rules, and has handed its incipient weapons technology over to the United States. At the Vienna meeting, ElBaradei said:

I am seriously concerned that Iran’s October declaration [on the nature and extent of its nuclear program] did not include any reference to its possession of P-2 centrifuge designs and related R&D, which in my view was a setback to Iran’s stated policy of transparency. This is particularly the case since the October declaration was characterized as providing "the full scope of Iranian nuclear activities", including a “complete centrifuge R&D chronology”.... [I]t is vital that, in the coming months, Iran ensures full transparency with respect to all of its nuclear activities, by taking the initiative to provide all relevant information in full detail and in a prompt manner....

Libya’s failure, over many years, to declare to the Agency its nuclear material and activities represents a breach of its obligation to comply with the provisions of its safeguards agreement, and its acquisition of a nuclear weapon design is clearly a matter of utmost concern.

The IAEA Director also noted that "The nuclear activities of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and its notice of withdrawal from the NPT, have set a dangerous precedent and thus remain a threat to the credibility of the nuclear non-proliferation regime. " ElBaradei's full statement is available here. Reuters has more.

The New York-based monitoring group Human Rights Watch issued a new report Monday alleging that US forces in Afghanistan have detained civilians arbitrarily, have used excessive force in arresting suspected Islamic militants, and have mistreated detainees. The organization says in a press release, "Human Rights Watch concludes that the U.S.-administered system of arrest and detention in Afghanistan exists outside of the rule of law." Read the full text of the report here. Reuters has more. The US military denied the allegations in a press briefing in Kabul - China's Xinhua news agency quotes a US officer as saying "I think the report shows the lack of understanding of the situation here. This is a combat zone we follow the law of war." Xinhuanet has more.

A new law governing Iraq's Central Bank came into effect Sunday after its signature by US Administrator Paul Bremer. The legislation defines price stabilization and support of a market-based financial structure as the main goals of the institution. The Coalition Provisional Authority has issued a press release and a fact sheet. Reuters has more.

Terry Waite, the Anglican envoy who was held hostage in Lebanon for five years in the mid-1980s, has arrived in the United States with family members who will be at the White House Monday pleading the case of the four UK nationals still held by the US at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba after the announcement last month that 5 others would be released. Details of the visit are available from the sponsoring organization, the UK-based Guantanamo Human Rights Commission. The UK Press Association has more. The trip coincides with an official visit by UK Home Secretary David Blunkett, who has criticized the detentions and who is calling for the prisoners to be treated in a "fair and humane fashion". US officials have told the British that the remaining UK detainees would pose a threat to the US and the UK if they were released. BBC News has more. The Home Secretary will speak at Harvard Law School tonight; the Home Office has released an advance copy of his remarks entitled Defending the Democratic State and Maintaining Liberty
– Two Sides of the Same Coin?.

UPDATE: An unnamed US official has defended the Guantanamo detentions by saying, according to UPI, that "We are disappointed that the British government has been unable to provide more information to the British people about the unsavory backgrounds of some of the British detainees and the threat they would pose to both the (United States and Britain)." UPI has more.

BBC News is reporting that after a two-day delay prompted by last-minute Shiite reservations, the members of the Iraqi Governing Council have signed a new interim constitution for Iraq at a Baghdad ceremony.

UPDATE: Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, has issued a fatwa - a religious ruling - on his website saying that the interim constitution will lack legitimacy until it is ratified by an elected body. Sistani's opposition to the document had stalled its original scheduled signing on Friday. AP has more. President Bush's statement welcoming the signing of the interim constitution is here.

In Monday's US law and business press, the Recorder reports that two Christian law firms are working together to have San Francisco's gay and lesbian marriages declared illegal.... The Texas Lawyer reports that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected a death row inmate's appeal of the rejection of his habeas petition, in which he had claimed racial discrimination during jury selection at his trial.... According to the Fulton County Daily Report, the GA Supreme Court has recommended disbarment for an attorney who charged clients for the time he spent defending himself from grievances they filed against him with the GA state bar's disciplinary authorities.... The Sacramento Business Journal reports that Oracle Corp. has filed its response to the DOJ's lawsuit seeking to block its takeover of PeopleSoft, Inc., arguing that the takeover will not hurt competition.... FindLaw's Writ has human rights attorney Noah Leavitt's guest column on the role of the next UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

click for the previous US law and business press review

US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was born on March 8, 1841. Learn more about Justice Holmes and pay a virtual visit to his gravesite at Arlington National Cemetary. Listen to a rare recording of Justice Holmes speaking on NBC Radio on the occasion of his 90th birthday in 1931.