[JURIST] Iraqi President Jalal Talabani [BBC profile] said Saturday that he supports a proposed law that would allow most members of Saddam Hussein's defunct Baath Party [BBC backgrounder] to return to their old positions in government. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki endorsed the Accountability and Justice Law [ICTJ backgrounder, PDF] after the Iraqi parliament passed [JURIST report] the bill last month. On Thursday, Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi [personal website, in Arabic; EPIC profile, PDF] said that he opposes [JURIST report] the law because it would require that many Iraqis given jobs following the 2003 US-led invasion of the country be forced to vacate their positions for the former Baathists. Before the bill can become law, it must be ratified by the Iraqi Presidency Council, which consists of Talabani, al-Hashemi, and Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi [BBC profile]. Reuters has more.

Passage of the de-Baathification reform legislation was noted by the White House last year as one of 18 as-yet-unmet benchmarks [JURIST report] of Iraqi progress towards stability. Iraqi Shiite religious leader Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani has previously called the bill "dangerous" [JURIST report] and the bill's passage stalled [JURIST report] as recently as late November 2007.

[JURIST] Turkey needs to lift its ban on women wearing headscarves at universities in order to improve the country's chances of accession into the European Union (EU) [JURIST news archive], Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan said Saturday. Turkey's Grand National Assembly [official website, in Turkish] is considering a bill [JURIST report] that would amend the country's constitution to allow for headscarves in universities and public offices. While the EU has not specifically told Turkey to lift its ban on headscarves, it has pressed Turkey to increase freedom of expression and minority rights. The headscarf bill was drafted in response to recent calls [JURIST report] from Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan [IHT profile] for the government to lift the ban. Reuters has more.

Meanwhile, approximately 125,000 Turks, comprised of mostly women, rallied in Ankara Saturday to protest the proposed bill, arguing that the bill will pressure them to cover their bodies as well. Headscarves and other forms of Muslim traditional religious dress [JURIST news archive] are banned from many public places in modern Turkey, a majority Muslim country despite official secularism. Supporters of the ban, largely secularists, say the ban on headscarves is necessary to protect the separation of religion and state. Erdogan has repeatedly called for an end to the ban, saying it effectively denies some Muslim women access to higher education [JURIST report], but secularists believe that Erdogan's insistence on ending the ban is a political statement against secular principles. Members of secular parties, including the Republican People's Party [party website, in Turkish] and the Democratic Left Party [party website, in Turkish], have threatened to appeal to the judiciary if parliament approves the bill lifting the headscarf ban. AP has more.

[JURIST] The Taiwanese Central Election Commission [official site] said Friday that it has approved two separate referendums on whether to proceed with a proposed bid for United Nations (UN) [official website] membership. The referendums, first announced [JURIST report] in June by Taiwanese President Chen Shui-Bian [BBC profile], will coincide with Taiwan's presidential elections scheduled for March 22. Chen's Democratic Progressive Party [party website] put forth one of the referendums, which seeks reinstatement to the UN under Taiwan's own name as a means of asserting the island's independence, while the opposing Kuomintang [party website; Global Security backgrounder] declined to specify a name in the language of the second referendum question. The vote may be largely symbolic, however, as Taiwan has faced harsh opposition to its membership bids in the past, primarily from China who possesses a veto on the UN Security Council and considers the bid to be a precursor to complete Taiwanese independence.

Taiwan [JURIST news archive], which officially refers to itself as the Republic of China (ROC), was kicked out of the UN by General Assembly Resolution 2758 [PDF text] and replaced by the People's Republic of China [JURIST news archive] as the representative of China in 1971. The ROC government retreated from the mainland in 1949 following its defeat in the Chinese Civil War. Taiwan has applied for reinstatement to the UN for each of the last 15 years though each application for membership has been rejected [JURIST report]. AP has more.

[JURIST] The US District Court for the District of Oregon [official website] ruled Friday that Oregon's domestic partnership law [HB 2007 text] should be allowed to take effect, saying that opponents of the law failed to gather the necessary signatures to place the law on the ballot for public referendum next November. Judge Michael Mosman suspended the law [JURIST report] in December pending Friday's hearing to determine whether county clerks inappropriately rejected signatures. In lieu of a written opinion, Mosmon issued a transcript [PDF text] of his closing remarks, saying that the "most troubling" argument in the case was its analogy to Bush v. Gore, and:

that if the actual setup for counting votes, and perhaps by extension for counting signatures, is so without standards that people who vote or sign a petition in one county are far more likely to qualify than people in another county because the evaluators, the people working for the state don't have any standard by which to make their judgments, that can violate the equal protection clause.

[JURIST] US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) [official website] has reached a settlement with two immigrants who said they were forcibly drugged with sedatives during deportation proceedings, CNN reported Friday. As part of the agreement, Raymond Soeoth, a minister from Indonesia, will receive $5,000 and will be allowed to stay in the US for at least two more years. Amadou Diouf, a Senegalese man married to a US citizen, will receive $50,000. An ICE spokesperson told CNN that the settlement and new policy requiring a court order before administering drugs to deportees reinforces the agency's dedication to assuring "safe, secure and humane conditions" for persons in ICE custody.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California (ACLU/SC) [advocacy website] in June 2007 brought the federal class action lawsuit [JURIST report] against the US on behalf of the deportees. In one incident from 2004, Soeoth claims that he was held down by ICE officers and injected with Haldol, a powerful anti-psychotic, despite refusing the medication. Diouf was allegedly injected with an unidentified psychotropic drug while resisting deportation in 2005. He was attempting to speak to pilots to inform them of his court-ordered stay of deportation [PDF text]. Neither of the men have a history of mental illness; the ACLU alleged the druggings were merely to silence them. CNN has more.

[JURIST] A New York state appeals court on Friday unanimously ruled [PDF text] that the state must legally recognize valid out-of-state same-sex marriages [NYCLU press release]. Patricia Martinez filed the lawsuit [case backgrounder] in Rochester, NY against her employer Monroe Community College (MCC) [acadmic website] after it denied her request to extend health benefits to her spouse Lisa Golden. The couple was married in Ontario, Canada in 2004 following the legalization of same-sex marriages there in 2003. The court emphasized that New York State has a long history of recognizing out-of-state marriages, and so long as a union did not offend "natural law" or violate a state statute, it must be recognized by the state. The court found that MCC violated New York Executive Law 296(1)(a), a law protecting employees from discrimination based on sexual orientation, among other things. Martinez was represented by the New York Civil Liberties Union [advocacy website], who called the decision a victory for families, fairness, and human rights. It was not immediately clear whether MCC would appeal the decision.

In June, the New York State Assembly passed a bill [A08590 materials; JURIST report] to legalize same-sex marriage. The bill, proposed by New York Governor Eliot Spitzer [official website] and sponsored [press release] by Assemblymember Daniel O'Donnell [official website], was defeated by the Republican controlled Senate and returned to the Assembly last month. The New York Times has more. The Democrat and Chronicle has additional coverage.