In Thursday's federal courts roundup, Judge Michael Mukasey of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York announced today that World Trade Center leaseholder Larry Silverstein will not be allowed in the courtroom during a trial over his multi-million dollar insurance policy. Mukasey made the ruling at a contempt hearing for Silverstein, who previously appeared to violate a court order when he publicly criticized insurance companies. AP has the full story.... The Bush Administration yesterday filed its brief to the US Supreme Court in the case of Rumsfeld v. Padilla. The brief argues that the president has the authority to indefinitely detain suspected terrorists, including American citizens, without bringing criminal charges. Oral argument is scheduled for April 28. CNN has the full story. FindLaw has the brief [PDF].

In Congressional news for Thursday, the House overwhelmingly passed HR 1375, the Financial Services Regulatory Relief Act. According to AP, today's legislation, which must first be approved by the Senate, would ease restrictions on mergers and make it easier for banks to operate interstate branches. It also allows credit unions to offer some services previously restricted to banks and exempts those organizations from registering with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition, the bill gives banks greater freedom to offer interest-bearing checking accounts to businesses. The bill includes an amendment that would prevent corporate entities with less than 85% of their business in financial services from using the provisions for interstate banking. Bloomberg reports that the amendment was targeted at retailers such as Walmart, Inc., reflecting concerns over mixing banking and commerce.... The House also unanimously approved separate legislation that would double to $50 million the reward for information leading to the capture of Osama bin Laden, AP reports. The bill, HR 3782, also increases to $25 million the maximum award that may be offered for the capture of so-called "narco-terrorists," or drug traffickers that engage in or support international terrorism.

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In international law news Thursday, the UN Security Council has called on Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo to respect the rule of law and has demanded that perpetrators of crimes be brought to justice. Ethic violence in the province, still formally affiliated with Serbia but under UNMIK, a UN-led administration, has escalated sharply in the last few days leaving some 30 people dead in the worst disturbances since the end of the war in 1999. The UN News Service has the full story. Read a summary of statements made at the meeting on the situation in Kosovo and watch recorded video of the proceedings.... The Pan-African Parliament of the African Union was inaugurated and began its first session Thursday. The new body, designed to give Africans a bigger voice in how they are governed, will provide a venue for debates on issues including human rights, democracy, culture and good governance and will seek to harmonize the laws of the member countries. The African Union has this press release. Read the protocol [PDF] to the Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community [PDF] which defines the composition, powers, functions and organization of the Pan-African Parliament. Reuters has more.... Work has been completed on the UN's draft Penal Code and Code of Criminal Procedure and the model statutes will be presented to a workshop sponsored by Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights later this year. The draft laws are meant to help countries emerging from armed conflict rebuild their justice systems. The UN News Service has the full story.

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In Thursday's rights and liberties news, AP reports that the National Organization for Women, Planned Parenthood, the American Civil Liberties Union have rallied to the defense of Utah mother Melissa Ann Rowland, charged with murdering her unborn child by refusing a C-section. Advocates for Rowland accuse the prosecutors of an assault on motherhood and describe the case as a backdoor effort to undermine abortion rights. The Salt Lake DA's office denies any political agenda and refutes using the case to affect women's rights to abortion.... Seven members of the Baylor University women's rowing club has filed suit in federal court alleging that the university violated Title IX by not recognizing their club team as a varsity sport. The university denies that allegations, noting that it maintains many nationally ranked women's sports programs. The rowing team alleges the discrimination violation based on the lack of boats and oars, locker rooms, university-provided scholarships, and scholarships. AP has more.

Here's Thursday's legal news from the US Department of Justice. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the Million Mom March have filed suit against Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). The organizations charge that Ashcroft and the ATF violated the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (the Assault Weapons Act) by allowing gun manufacturers to make new housings, which the organizations condend, basically creates a new gun. The Act makes it a crime to manufacture, transfer, or possess a semiautomatic assault weapon, excluding weapons in possession before the act was enacted. The Brady Campaign relies on correspondence between the ATF and a weapons manufacturer in Maine in which the ATF gave instructions concerning the replacement of receivers in semiautomatic weapons, essentially restoring assault weapons that were excluded by the Act. The ban on assault weapons is set to expire in 2004 and did not make it through Congress this month. The Justice Department has currently not issued a comment on the subject. Read the complaint here [PDF]. AP has more.

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Speaking this week at the University of Wyoming College of Law, US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor bemoaned the current ethical state of the legal profession. In her lecture, entitled "Professionalism & Ethics," she identified declines in professionalism and ethical standards as responsible in part for widespread and widely documented job dissatisfaction among attorneys. She urged practicing and prospective attorneys in her overflow audience to practice civility in an environment better characterized by brutality, and to remember the "moral and social aspects of an attorney's power and position." The Casper Star-Tribune has the full story here.

Meanwhile, Harvard Law School has launched a new program to research changes in the legal profession, notably its transformation to one dominated by global enterprises. Under the direction of Professor David Wilkins, though, the first project of the new Program on Lawyers and the Professional Services Industry will examine how corporations select and purchase legal services in an increasingly competitive market. HLS has the full story here.

Elewhere, Pace Law School's competitive negotiating team has earned itself a trip to the City of Lights. By besting a field of 180 law schools in the American Bar Association's Negotiation Competiton in February, the team earned the honor of representing the US in an international competition in Paris in July. See Pace's press release for more.

Finally, Janet Harvey-Clark, Marketing Director at the Michigan State University-DCL College of Law, writes to clarify JURIST's Wednesday report on a proposal to more fully integrate the school with Michigan State. "MSU isn't stripping us of our affiliation," she says. "The affiliation agreement remains fully intact. We are just strengthening the affiliation to include academic governence [sic] issues, more integrated academic programming and the name change." JURIST reiterates its original statement that the proposal would strip the school only of its "nominal affiliation with DCL," and thanks Ms. Harvey-Clark for her clarification.

In testimony Thursday before a House subcommittee, the General Accounting Office estimated that in the years prior to its overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime raised more than $10.1 billion illegally through unauthorized oil sales, surcharges and kickbacks. Read the prepared statements of GAO officials before the House Financial Services Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee here. AP has more. In other Saddam Hussein developments Thursday, a senior US State Department official said that Hussein, now a prisoner of war in US custody, was sparring with his interrogators and clearly thought he was smarter than they were, but that the ongoing interrogation of him was producing useful leads for prosecution before a tribunal. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage made the comments in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Reuters has more.

In our second story on the ICTY this afternoon, the Hague war crimes tribunal has sentenced a former Yugoslav admiral to seven years in prison. Miodrag Jokic pleaded guilty before the ICTY last August to six counts of violating laws of war in a 1991 shelling attack on the Croatian city of Dubrovnik's Old Town. The ICTY has a summary of the Sentencing Judgment here. The UN news service has more.

A coalition of seven environmental and public health groups - including the Environmental Integrity Project, the Sierra Club, and Physicians for Social Responsibility - filed a lawsuit Thursday alleging that the new EPA air emissions rules are intentionally flawed and may worsen emissions problem because the new system allows manufacturers to monitor themselves rather than be subjected to governmental monitoring. The groups claim that this self-monitoring capability is in violation of the Clean Air Act's provision of adequate monitoring. Read their press release. The Environmental Integrity Project has posted the petition for review [PDF] and other background documents. UPI has more.

The United Kingdom Court of Appeal Thursday upheld a decision by a special tribunal to release a Libyan terror suspect who had been held in prison for two years without charge. The Lord Chief Justice Lord Woolf affirmed the tribunal's decision that authorities had no basis to suspect that he had been linked to terrorism and should be set free. This ruling is the first defeat of post-September 11 powers allowing detention of foreigners without charge. Read the judgment here. Reuters has more.

Carla del Ponte, the Swiss chief war crimes prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, said in Swiss media sources Thursday that she will not be dropping genocide charges against former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic as requested by three amicus curiae who recently filed a brief with the Tribunal following the close of the prosecution's case. Swissinfo has more. Meanwhile, ICTY President Theodore Meron has scheduled a hearing on March 25 to ascertain whether the accused gives his consent to the continuation of proceedings against him by a substitute judge; presiding UK jurist Richard May will be resigning from the court effective May 31 on health grounds. Should Milosevic object to the substitution, the two remaining judges could still continue alone if that is in the best interests of the case. The UN news service has more.

In a report released Thursday, Amnesty International said that one year after the US-led invasion of Iraq, "the promise of human rights for Iraqi citizens remains far from realized":

Twelve months on from the invasion of Iraq by the US-led coalition, the Iraqi people still suffer from serious human rights violations. The past year has seen scores of unarmed people killed due to excessive or unnecessary use of lethal force by Coalition forces during public demonstrations, at check points and in house raids. Thousands of people have been detained, often under harsh conditions, and subjected to prolonged and often unacknowledged detention. Many have been tortured or ill-treated and some have died in custody.

Read the full AI report and an accompanying press release. Reuters has more here. A more positive US perspective on rights progress and other developments in Iraq in the past year is available here from the Coalition Provisional Authority.

The European Commission Thursday proposed creating a Europe-wide database of criminal records to help identify and stop terrorists. The proposal comes a week after the devastating Madrid train bombings. A number of similar database systems - such as Total Information Awareness and MATRIX - have proven controversial with civil libertarians and privacy advocates in the United States. Read a Commission press release on the proposed European Register here. AP has more.

In Thursday's family law news, Tennessee grandparents will soon be able to petition for visitation with grandchildren even if the parents do not want them to see the children thanks to an amendment that was sent to the governor this week. The amendment provides six circumstances under which a grandparent may seek court ordered visitation. The amendment will become law as soon as the governor signs it or within 10 days of receipt in the governor's office. AP has more.... In other family law news, the New Jersey Supreme Court has clarified the circumstances under which child welfare officials can seek termination of the parental rights of suspected child abusers. NJ law says that family services must first try to reunite families unless they can show "aggravating circumstances" which make such a reunion dangerous for the child. The question remained what constitutes "aggravating circumstances." The NJ Supreme Court, in a ruling yesterday, defined the phrase as "severe or repetetive" abuse and circumstances created by the conduct of the parents that "create an unacceptably high risk to the health, safety, and welfare of the child." The court also said that termination of parental rights can be sought immediately when there has been a conviction of a serious crime. Read the ruling here [PDF]. AP has more.

In Thursday's criminal law and punishment news, Ohio's Plain Dealer reports that the Supreme Court of Ohio on Wednesday upheld the conviction and death sentence of Quisi Bryan. Bryan had been convicted for the death of a Cleveland police officer. Ohio law automatically makes the killing of a police officer a capital crime. Bryan's attorneys argued that such a law is unconstitutional because it practically guarantees a death sentence. The state's highest court disagreed. Read the opinion here [DOC].... South Carolina's Sun News reports that the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit on Wednesday upheld David Clayton Hill's stay of execution. The stay was issued because of questions involving the constitutionality of lethal injection.

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In Thursday's corporations and securities law news, former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling has provided his defense team with approximately $23 million for the charges he faces in connection with the failure of the energy giant. Read the indictment against Skilling here[PDF]. The Houston Chronicle has more.... The SEC is reporting unidentified investors made $1.7 million in illegal profit by buying options to purchase InVision Technologies shares in the days leading up to General Electric's announcement that it was buying the company. Read the GE press release announcing the deal here. USAToday.com has more.... Lucent Technologies Inc. has agreed to pay a penalty of $25 million to the SEC relating to last year's settlement of a two-year investigation into improperly booked revenue in 2000. Lucent says the penalty is based on the company's lack of cooperation during the investigation and certain actions taken by the company subsequent to the agreement in principle. Read the Lucent press release announcing the deal here. AP has more.... Royal Dutch/Shell further reduced its proven reserves for 2002 by a further 250 million barrels bringing the total reserves erroneously reported to the SEC to 4.15 billion barrels. The company attempted to reassure investors by calling a hastily convened conference for investors and the press. Read the Shell press release announcing the reduction in total reserves here. Listen to the Shell news conference here. The Financial Times has more.... As reported earlier on JURIST's Paper Chase, Italian prosecutors have named 29 executives and three companies whom they say should face trial over the collapse of food giant Parmalat. Included in the list are founder Calisto Tanzi, executives of Bank of America, and two Parmalat auditors. BBC has more.... In the 9th largest US vehicle recall, GM has recalled 3.6 million pickup trucks to fix faulty tailgate cables. Bloomberg.com has more.... As reported earlier on JURIST's Paper Chase, the EU antitrust chief announced talks with Microsoft had failed and a final ruling against the software giant is expected next week. In a procedure expected to take several years, Microsoft could appeal the ruling to the Luxembourg-based Court of First Instance and later to the European Court of Justice. Microsoft could also ask the court to suspend any order to change its behavior until a final ruling has been decided. Read the statement by the European Commission announcing that no deal could be struck here. AP has more.

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The European Parliament's Justice and Home Affairs Committee voted Thursday to condemn a airline passenger data-sharing agreement between the US and the European Commission (see a December 2003 Department of Homeland Security press release), a move which may be a prelude to a court challenge to the pact before the European Court of Justice. EU legislators object to the apparent infringement of European privacy rules by US collection of credit card and other personal information on arriving air passengers. AP has more

AP is reporting that US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has refused to recuse himself from an energy case involving Vice President Dick Cheney. The plaintiff Sierra Club had formally requested the recusal.

UPDATE: Justice Scalia's 21-page memorandum refusing recusal is here [PDF]. Justice Scalia wrote:

Let me respond, at the outset, to Sierra Club’s suggestion
that I should “resolve any doubts in favor of recusal.” Motion to Recuse 8. That might be sound advice if I were sitting on a Court of Appeals. But see In re Aguinda, 241 F. 3d 194, 201 (CA2 2000). There, my place would be taken by another judge, and the case would proceed normally. On the Supreme Court, however, the consequence is different: The Court proceeds with eight Justices, raising the possibility that, by reason of a tie vote, it will find itself unable to resolve the significant legal issue presented by the case. Thus, as Justices stated in their 1993 Statement of Recusal Policy: “[W]e do not think it would serve the public interest to go beyond the requirements of the statute, and to recuse ourselves, out of an excess of caution, whenever a relative is a partner in the firm before us or acted as a lawyer at an earlier stage. Even one unnecessary recusal impairs the functioning of the Court.” (Available in Clerk of Court’s case file.) Moreover, granting the motion is (insofar as the outcome of the particular case is concerned) effectively the same as casting a vote against the petitioner. The petitioner needs five votes to overturn the judgment below, and it makes no difference whether the needed fifth vote is missing because it has been cast for the other side, or because it has not been cast at all.

Even so, recusal is the course I must take—and will take—when, on the basis of established principles and practices, I have said or done something which requires that course. I have recused for such a reason this very Term. See Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow, 540 U. S. ___ (cert. granted, Oct. 14, 2003). I believe, however, that established principles and practices do not require (and thus do not permit) recusal in the present case.

The Sierra Club's original brief filed in support of their motion for recusal is here [PDF]. AP has more.

UPDATE-2: The Sierra Club has now issued a press release in response to Justice Scalia's refusal to recuse himself:

Justice Scalia misses the point. There's a problem when a Justice and a litigant meet secretly at a private hunting retreat -- regardless of what happens behind closed doors. It is the appearance of secrecy and impropriety that creates the problem, and it clearly has caused a public outcry here. If Justice Scalia and Mr. Cheney had only been so forthcoming with the facts at the outset, the public might have responded differently and this might have taken a different course. Even in light of this newly disclosed information, the Sierra Club still believes that recusal would be appropriate under the applicable legal standard.

Read the full press release here.

UPDATE-3: Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Democrat Patrick Leahy has offered this statement criticizing Justice Scalia's decision not to recuse himself, suggesting at the end that "his lengthy self-defense spotlights the strange procedure in our federal courts under which concerns about the appearance of impropriety are decided by those whose actions have created that appearance."

Martha Stewart, convicted earlier this month for lying to investigators about a stock trade, is apparently asking a number of supporters to write letters to the sentencing judge about her character and "probity." The website Gawker.com posted an alleged copy of Stewart's letter yesterday. In the meantime, Stewart's own defense website, Marthatalks.com, carries a letter announcing her resignation from the board of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, and saying that "I am heartsick about my personal legal situation - and deeply sorry for the pain and difficulties it has caused all our Company employees."

A spokesman for British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Thursday that the UK government will not force through Parliament controversial legislation replacing the law lords with a UK Supreme Court and abolishing the traditional office of Lord Chancellor. Earlier this month the House of Lords voted to sideline the plan into a special committee for further study. The government and opposition leaders in the Lords have now agreed that the committee will have time to examine the proposal without the government invoking its power to force passage of the legislation over objections from the upper chamber. BBC News has more.

Israel's Supreme Court Wednesday imposed an indefinite freeze on the construction of a section of the country's new "security fence" (official website here) after receiving a report from a group of former Isreali military officers that questioned the proposed route and construction plan. The Court had earlier ordered short-term suspensions, but has now directed the Army to formally respond to the new report; no new hearing on the matter has been scheduled. The legality of the fence is currently being considered by the International Court of Justice at The Hague. AP has more. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs has recently posted an elaborate Flash-based presentation making the case for the security barrier here.

Spanish authorities Thursday announced the arrest of four more individuals - two Moroccans and two others - in connection with their investigation into last week's Madrid train bombings. Meanwhile five other suspects - three Moroccans and two Indians - arrested late last week are slated to appear in court in Madrid lkater today for closed door preliminary hearings to determine whether they should be released or continued in detention. Reuters has more. Madrid's El Mundo provides the latest coverage in Spanish here.

AP is reporting that Italian prosecutors have formally requested indictments against 29 parties involved in the Parlamat fraud scandal, which centers around the disappearance of over $6 billion from an account held by the Italian company with Bank of America. In addition to Parlamat founder Calisto Tanzi and other company officials, three former Bank of America officials are named in the request along with the accounting firms Grant Thornton and Deloitte & Touche, which audited Parlamat's books. Parlamat itself is currently undergoing restructuring, as explained in this press release [PDF] issued yesterday by the company.

Talks between Microsoft and the European Commission which might have averted an antitrust ruling against the company failed Thursday, leaving Microsoft facing a potentially-stiff fine and a directive to change its European marketing policy. EU Competition Commissioner Mario Monti said in a statement:

We made substantial progress towards resolving the problems which have arisen in the past but we were unable to agree on commitments for future conduct. In the end, I had do decide what was best for competition and consumers in Europe. I believe they will be better served with a decision that creates a strong precedent.

BBC News has more.

In Thursday's US law and business press, the New York Law Journal reports that a NY federal judge will not grant summary judgment in favor of doctors and a prenatal services provider attacking the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 [PDF].... As reported yesterday on JURIST's Paper Chase, US District Judge Gladys Kessler has allowed the government's $289 billion racketeering suit against the tobacco industry to proceed. The Legal Times reports on the massive amount of paperwork involved in the case.... The Sacramento Business Journal reports that a CA federal judge has approved a $93 million settlement of a lawsuit against Homestore.com accusing the company of falsifying financial statements and engaging in accounting irregularities.... The Miami Daily Business Review reports that a FL federal judge has accused the Miami US Attorney's office of being "weak-kneed" for not recommending the type of harsh sentence for a drug trafficking defendant that judges must recommend.... FindLaw's Writ features CA attorney (and former law clerk to the late Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun) Edward Lazarus's column on the real story behind the release of Justice Blackmun's papers and tapes, as well as Stanford law professor Lauren Gelman's commentary on regulating technology with the "broadcast flag" rule.

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On March 18, 1963, the US Supreme Court ruled in Gideon v. Wainwright that an indigent defendant in a criminal trial has a right to the assistance of counsel. Visit Gideon at 40: Fulfilling the Promise, an anniversary resource page from the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.