In response to the earthquake that devastated Haiti on January 12, 2010, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) stayed deportations of people with criminal convictions. On December 9, ICE lifted that ban.  According to the Center for Constitutional Rights, 89 Haitian nationals were arrested and detained last week. ICE officials claim the deportations will begin in January.

The Center for Constitutional Rights has joined forces with the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, and Alternative Chance, to denounce ICE’s decision to deport Haitian nationals during the current conditions in Haiti, which include a cholera outbreak. The International Red Cross claimed that the epidemic has reached Haitian jails, and that at least 10 people had died from cholera as of November 29, 2010.

According to the civil rights groups, “Sending Haitian nationals to be detained in facilities deemed deplorable before the earthquake where exposure to cholera could lead to death is a violation of the U.S. government’s obligations under the Convention Against Torture (CAT). The Convention Against Torture prohibits the United States from deporting someone when it can be shown that "more likely than not that he or she would be tortured if removed to the proposed country of removal." 8 CFR 1208.16.

Has exposure to a life-threatening disease ever been considered torture under CAT?  You could plug 8 CFR 1208.16 into Lexis or Westlaw and check the citations from courts and administrative agencies.  You might want to take a look at this book on Defining Torture.  You can always use a periodicals index to narrow the focus of your periodicals search to just articles dealing with the Convention against Torture, and then narrowing your search to articles that include definitions, or articles that mention disease.

                      -Ryan Harrington

For over 40 years legislation on food and agriculture was collected and disseminated by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) through a publication called Food and Agricultural Legislation.

Since the advent of the digital in formation age, the FAO Legal Office has taken up the challenge to provide its user community with an accessible, more comprehensive and up-to-date legal information service through its online database, FAOLEX.

FAOLEX contains treaties, laws, and regulations on food, agriculture, and renewable natural resources from all over the world. Most of the material comes from the official gazettes sent by FAO's Member Nations pursuant to Article XI of the FAO Constitution. Upon receiving such material, the FAO Legal Office selects, indexes, and summarizes in English, French, or Spanish significant texts pertaining to FAO’s mandate, i.e. legislation on agriculture, livestock, environment, fisheries, food, forestry, land & soil, cultivated plants, water, and wild species & ecosystems. Records are provided in either English, French or Spanish or the language of communication used by the originating country.

The Legal Information Institute of India (LII of India) is now open for public access prior to its formal launch in India in early 2011.

LII of India at present has 50 databases, including over 300,000 decisions from 37 Courts and Tribunals, Indian national legislation from 1836, over 800 bilateral treaties, law reform reports and about 500 law journal articles. The LawCite citator tracks case and journal article citations. Further case law, and State and Territory legislation, will be added by the time of the formal launch.

LII of India has been developed through cooperation between four leading Indian Law Schools (NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad; National Law School of India University, Bangalore;  National Law University, Delhi, and  Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Law, Indian Institute of Technology - Kharagpur) in partnership with AustLII. The technical hub of the project will be NALSAR in Hyderabad, with initial development and ongoing support from AustLII.

Prof VC Vivekanandan of NALSAR is the Director. Funding support has been provided primarily by AusAid, with additional support from the Australian Research Council and the Commonwealth Secretariat.

There is an Outline of the project and a User Guide.

Many system features will be familiar to users of WorldLII, AustLII (Australian LII), SAFLII (Southern African LII), etc.

The Ninth Session of the Assembly of States Parties (ASP) to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) will be held at the United Nations in New York this week December 6th to 10th 2010.

Representatives from the 113 States Parties to the Rome Statute will gather to discuss various issues and decide on the Court's operational matters. The Ninth Session follows the Kampala Review Conference which concluded in June of this year with parties adopting a resolution on a definition and framework for the prosecution of the crime of Aggression.

Historical treatises and primary sources on ICC jurisprudence are located on L1 of the law library with call number KZ6310.