On May 3

On this day in ...
... 1990, Canada's Supreme Court ruled unanimously held that women charged with murder could show that they suffered from battered spouse syndrome as a means to proving they acted in self-defense. The decision, written by Justice Bertha Wilson (right), was issued in the case of Angelique Lyn Lavallee of Winnipeg, who had shot her husband to death after years of beatings. A Canadian Broadcasting Co. segment on the ruling is here.
... 1947, the post-World War II Constitution of Japan went into effect. (Video clip here.) (photo credit) The influence of the United States, which had occupied Japan after the war, is evident in the document's very 1st sentence:

We, the Japanese people, acting through our duly elected representatives in the National Diet, determined that we shall secure for ourselves and our posterity the fruits of peaceful cooperation with all nations and the blessings of liberty throughout this land, and resolved that never again shall we be visited with the horrors of war through the action of government, do proclaim that sovereign power resides with the people and do firmly establish this Constitution.

(Prior May 3 posts are here and here.)

On April 9

On this day in ...
... 1987, in RWDSU v. Saskatchewan, in which locals of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, along with other unions, challenged laws in several provinces, the Supreme Court of Canada held that there was no constitutional right to strike. They thus rejected the argument that the 1982 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms -- stating in relevant part "2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms: ... d) freedom of association." -- includes such a right. The lone woman on the Court, Justice Bertha Wilson (left), was also the lone dissenter from this decision.
... 1609 (400 years ago today), Spain and Netherlands signed the Treaty of Antwerp, which ended nearly a half-century of hostilities between northern Netherlands and Spanish rulers and marked the beginning of the Twelve Years Truce, . In its announcement of an upcoming conference commemorating this quatrocentenary, Tilburg University continues:

Whereas at the expiration of the Truce in 1621, the war would resume for another quarter century, no serious strategic attempts were made any more by Madrid to re-conquer the Northern Netherlands.
The Twelve Years Truce did not only lay out the groundwork for the future final peace settlement in political terms, but also in legal terms. ...
Between the late 15th and late 17th centuries, peace treaties became much more elaborate legal instruments than they had been before. The legal principles, concepts and rules which were developed within the peace treaties of that period came to form a major part of the classical law of nations, and to its hardcore, the laws of war and peace. The Truce of Antwerp and papers documenting its negotiation process constitute important formative as well as informative sources for the laws of war and peace of the Early Modern Age.

Details on this conference, to be held April 23 & 24, are here. (credit for photo of Antwerp's circa 1580 Guildhouses)

(Prior April 9 posts are here and here.)

On January 28, ...

... 1873 (135 years ago today), Sidonie Gabrielle Claudine Colette was born in the village of Saint-Saveur-en-Puisaye in France's Burgundy province. Her father was a retired Army officer and "frustrated politician," the New York Times wrote, adding that her

mother, Sidonie, had the greater influence on the girl and taught her the importance of being a woman. Sidonie was the type who shocked the neighbors by refusing to wear mourning clothes when her husband died and who read Corneille at mass.

At age 20 the daughter married Henri Gauthier-Villars, a Parisian editor who wrote potboilers under the pseudonym "M. Willy." He encouraged his bride to write, then published her "Claudine" stories of school life under his own name, bringing wealth and fame to himself. "She never liked writing, so M. Willy locked her in a room until she turned out something. After thirteen years of such apprenticeship," the Times wrote, she "became disillusioned and divorced him." The woman eventually known only by the surname she was given at birth, Colette (above left), published one of her best known novels, Cheri, in 1920. Though never admitted to the prestigious Académie française -- because, as the Times matter-of-factly explained at her death in 1954, "it is for men only" -- Colette was admitted to the Belgian Academy of French Language and Literature, was an honorary associate of the American National Institute of Arts and Letters, and became the 2d woman in history to be made a grand officer of France's Légion d'honneur.
... 1988 (20 years ago today), the Supreme Court of Canada, in the case of R. v. Morgentaler, ruled by a vote of 5 to 2 that a criminal statute making abortion a crime violated Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which states:

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.

(The 1982 Charter, incidentally, is among the IntLawGrrls' Legal Wonders of the World.) In the majority were Chief Justice Robert George Brian Dickson and Justices Jean-Marie Philémon Joseph Beetz, Willard Zebedee Estey, Antonio Lamer, and Bertha Wilson (As we've posted, Wilson (right) was the 1st woman ever to serve on the Court). Dissenting were Justices William Rogers McIntyre and Gérard La Forest. Employing a methodology I've discussed here and here, the Court looked to numerous foreign decisions as aids to interpretation of its Constitution. Among them: Roe v. Wade (U.S. 1973), which, as posted earlier this month, just marked its 35th anniversary; Paton v. United Kingdom (Eur. Comm'n H. Rts. 1980); and the West German Abortion Decision (Fed. Rep. Ger. 1975).
... 1969, U.S. Rep. Linda Sánchez (D-Cal.) was born in Orange, California.

On September 18, ...

... 2007 (today), the United Nations' General Assembly begins its 62d regular session at U.N. headquarters in New York. Provisional agenda's here.
... 2001, exactly 1 week after the terrorists attacked the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, the U.S. Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force, which stipulated

"[t]hat the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

This joint congressional resolution's been claimed to authorize a host of acts, ranging from detention at Guantánamo to covert electronic surveillance; those claims remain the subject of litigation in U.S. courts.
.... 1923, Bertha Wilson (right), who served from 1982-1991 as the 1st woman member of Canada’s Supreme Court, was born in Kirkcaldy, Scotland.