Illinois outlaws death penalty

In Illinois, capital punishment is no more.
Today Governor Pat Quinn:
► Signed legislation abolishing the death penalty,
► Commuted all existing death sentences to life without parole, and
► Pledged to commute any death sentence levied before the law takes effect on July 1.
In his signing statement, Quinn said that he had:

concluded that our system of imposing the death penalty is inherently flawed. The evidence presented to me by former prosecutors and judges with decades of experience in the criminal justice system has convinced me that it is impossible to devise a system that is consistent, that is free of discrimination on the basis of race, geography or economic circumstance, and that always gets it right.
As a state, we cannot tolerate the executions of innocent people because such actions strike at the very legitimacy of a government.

Threatening government's legitimacy, he explained, was the troubling fact that since 1977, 20 persons condemned to Illinois' death row had been exonerated in postconviction innocence proceedings. It is that, more than anything, that today makes Illinois the 2d of the country's 5 most populous states to move into the abolitionist column. (By turning blue on the map below (credit), Illinois joins a Midwestern consensus that spreads over to Iowa and up to North Dakota and Michigan.) Said Quinn of the wrongful capital convictions:

To say that this is unacceptable does not even begin to express the profound regret and shame we, as a society, must bear for these failures of justice.

He questioned claims that capital punishment has a deterrent effect, and further stated that

the enormous sums expended by the state in maintaining a death penalty system would be better spent on preventing crime and assisting victims’ families in overcoming their pain and grief.

Quinn, a Catholic who made the announcement on Ash Wednesday, drew support from a quote the late Joseph Bernardin, long Cardinal of Chicago's archdiocese. He expressed thanks for guidance from others -- "prosecutors, judges, elected officials, religious leaders from around the world, families of murder victims, people on death row who were exonerated and ordinary citizens" -- whom he did not identify by name.
Names of at least 3 persons jump to the mind amid this fundamental change in the governance of this 'Grrl's birth state. Recently retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who often criticized the administration of capital punishment in appearances before lawyers in his native Chicago, and whose recent New York Review of Books essay made points echoed in Quinn's statement. Professor Larry Marshall, who spearheaded innocence cases during his long tenure at Northwestern University School of Law (from which Governor Quinn, Justice Stevens, my classmate Larry, and I all received J.D.s). And the late U.S. District Judge Prentice H. Marshall, who spoke against the death penalty at a commemoration of Haymarket I attended while clerking for him years ago. One imagines each would agree with the words with which the governor concluded today:

... I firmly believe that we are taking an important step forward in our history as Illinois joins the 15 other states and many nations of the world that have abolished the death penalty.

On March 5

On this day in ...
... 1616 (395 years ago today), decades after his death, the Sacred Congregation of the Roman Catholic Church condemned Nicolaus Copernicus for espousing, in his On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, a theory that the Church deemed false; that is, that the earth moved around a stationary sun. (image credit) Just last year, the Church in Poland reburied Copernicus' remains in a cathedral, while "prelates praised him as a man of devotion and scientific genius."

(Prior March 5 posts are here, here, here, and here.)

ATS Case Involving Abuse By Church Officials Survives Motion to Dismiss

An Alien Tort Statute (ATS) case pending in the Central District of California survived this week a motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. The case was filed on behalf of a Mexican national, proceeding anonymously, against Cardinal Roger Mahony, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, Mexican national Cardinal Norberto Rivera, Mexican national Father Nicholas Aguilar Rivera (left, the alleged direct perpetrator), and the Diocese of Tehuacan in Mexico. Plaintiff's lawyers specialize in cases redressing the abuse of minors. The plaintiff's allegations stem from abuse suffered when he was twelve-years old at the hands of Father Aguilar and the subsequent conspiracy among the defendants to conceal and cover-up the abuse in order to protect Father Aguilar and the Church. The complaint contains ten causes of action, including:

• rape & other sexual abuse,
• crimes against humanity,
• torture,
• cruel, inhuman, & degrading treatment,
• civil conspiracy,
• intentional infliction of emotional distress,
• negligence and
• failure to warn.

In addition to the abuse of the plaintiff, it alleges other instances of abuse in the relevant dioceses, including some that led to the criminal prosecution of Father Aguilar (see this timeline of events). Evidence invoked in the opinion suggest that Church officials were aware of Father Aguilar's history of abuse and yet did nothing to prevent his access to children in either diocese.

In the opinion denying defendants' motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction (under FRCP 12(b)(1)), the Court determined that plaintiff had adequately pled a federal cause of action and thus had the right to proceed in federal court. In so ruling, the Court determined that the plaintiff's claims were not insubstantial, implausible, frivolous, or devoid of merit, which would allow it to dismiss the case at this preliminary stage in the absence of a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted (under FRCP 12(b)(6)). The Court also ruled that the complaint was not barred by the 10-year statute of limitation, because the ATS is subject to equitable tolling. The infamous Erie case reared its head here as the Court cited California laws tolling cases involving a child plaintiff until the child turns 18 and laws tolling cases filed by victims of sexual abuse until the child turns 26. The Court determined that the case was timely under either theory. In addition, the Court ruled that plaintiff was not required to exhaust local remedies prior to filing suit here.

Most importantly for students of international law, the Court also ruled that plaintiff's international law claims were actionable under the Alien Tort Statute as violations of customary international law. In particular, it noted that rape, sexual abuse, and private torture can violate international law when they rise to the level of crimes against humanity. In so ruling, the Court cited prior ATS jurisprudence, human rights treaties including the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and Article 7 of the ICC Statute (defining crimes against humanity). The Court confirmed that supplemental jurisdiction exists over the California state law claims of negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Based on the arguments made in the instant motion, we can expect future motions to dismiss arguing that

• As a corporation, the Archdiocese cannot be sued under the ATS,


• The plaintiff has failed to allege facts that if true would entitle him to relief for the causes of action alleged.

The crimes against humanity claim is no doubt the most worrisome claim for the Church and the most vulnerable claim for the plaintiff. It will require the plaintiff to demonstrate the existence of a widespread and systematic attack against a civilian population. Given the increasing number of cases involving abuse and cover-up within the Church worldwide, the plaintiff may be able to meet this threshold. In addition, maintaining the crimes against humanity claim will entitle the plaintiff to broad pattern-and-practice discovery. The relevant federal rules of civil procedure allow discovery on any matter that is relevant to the party's claims; for good cause shown, the court may order discovery of any matter relevant to the subject matter involved in the action. This broad scope is limited, however, by evidentiary privileges, such as that between priest and penitent as set forth in California law.

This website contains information and a searchable database on priests accused of abuse (list of names above). Stay Tuned!

'Nuff said

(Taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)

'Just punishment can occur without resorting to the death penalty.'

-- Statement signed by the Archbishop of Cincinnati, the Bishop of Columbus, and 8 other Roman Catholic Church leaders in Ohio, reported to have "joined a chorus" of calls for repeal of the state's 30-year-old capital punishment statute. (credit for 2005 AP photo of Ohio's execution chamber) Others sounding this call include "Ohio Supreme Court Justice Paul E. Pfeifer, a Republican who helped write the state's original death-penalty law" (his anti-death-penalty op-ed is here), as well as "a former state prisons director who witnessed 33 executions." Data revealed Ohio to be 2d only to Texas in the number of recent executions; another is set for February 17. Ohio's death row houses 156 men and 1 woman.

The Bombing of Claudy in 1972: Report of the Police Ombudsman of Northern Ireland

In 1972 the small Derry town of Claudy was devastated by the explosion of three car bombs by the IRA, causing the death of nine people and injuring thirty more. Information was made available shortly afterwards to the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) suggesting the involvement of a Catholic priest, Fr James Chesney, in the bombings. Perhaps understandably, given the incredibly volatile situation existing in Northern Ireland at the time, a political approach was made to the Roman Catholic Church informing them of the suspicions against Fr Chesney. The Church's response was to speak to F. Chesney (who, it appears, denied involvement), and move him to a parish in Donegal within the Republic of Ireland. Fr Chesney, who died in 1980, was never again placed in a parish in Northern Ireland, the police investigation into his involvement was never followed up, and nobody has ever been charged in relation to the bombing of Claudy.
Yesterday the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland released his report in to the handling of the Claudy investigation by the RUC. Working within his remit--of considering whether there was police misconduct--the Ombudsman concluded that the investigation was deficient for its failure to pursue a line of questioning and investigation that would have either confirmed suspicions or resulted in Fr Chesney being eliminated from the investigation. This report has resulted in accusations of a Roman Catholic 'cover up' of Fr. Chesney's involvement and denial of same by the Cardinal of All Ireland, Fr. Séan Brady (Irish Times editorial). It has also resulted in an apology from the British government to the people of Claudy for the deliciency of the investigation and raised questions, as I noted here, of compliance with the investigation obligation in Article 2 (right to life) of the European Convention on Human Rights.
It is to be assumed that moving Fr Chesney to a parish in Donegal did not, of itself, prevent the issuance of an arrest warrant against him. Indeed, although there is quite a substantial amount of criticism of the Church's role in this investigation (perhaps primarily because of revelations in Ireland about the extent to which the Church hierarchy covered up clerical child sex abuse), it does seem to me that the Church did not substantially impede police investigation. Whether they would have done so had the RUC determined to arrest Fr Chesney (and, indeed, whether the Irish government would have extradited him to Northern Ireland if charged) is a different question in relation to which only conjecture is possible.
What is really striking about the revelations in the Ombudsman's report is the extent to which politics played an important--if not determinative--role in the manner in which atrocities in Northern Ireland were investigated. Unlike in cases of collusion with Loyalist/Unionist paramilitary organisations which I have written about here on IntLawGrrls before, the decision about Claudy seemed to be motivated not by a desire for a cover-up but rather by an appreciation of the immense ramifications arrest of a Catholic priest for IRA involvement would have had in 1972 Northern Ireland. Indeed, the Ombudsman himself noted the possible political motivations for this course of action yesterday.
The reality, however, is that however and why-ever motivated the decision to cut off an important and seemingly viable line of investigation into the bombing was a flagrant breach of the rights (and, indeed, the needs) of the deceased and their families; families that, as evidenced by their interaction with the media yesterday, remain deeply and profoundly affected not only by their loved ones' deaths but also by the RUC's failure to fully pursue the perpetrators of the attack.

On May 27

On this day in ...
... 1517, Dominican and Franciscan friars, headed by Pedro de Córdoba, wrote a letter to Spain's monarchy in defense of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Prompting the letter were Spanish colonial policies that had decimated the native population.

(Prior May 27 posts are here, here, and here.)

On May 17

On this day in ...
... 2008, Sister Catherine Mulkerrin (left) died from cancer in Framingham, Massachusetts, 72 years after her birth in the same state. (photo credit) She'd entered the sisterhood at age 18, working 1st as a teacher and eventually becoming the leader of her order, the Sisters of St. Joseph, and chair of the New England Regional Leadership Conference of Women Religious. "She reinforced her order’s commitment to the poor and spoke out forcefully on behalf of the order against nuclear arms proliferation." As assistant director from 1992-94 of the Archdiocesan Office for Victims of Abuse -- years before abuse became a global scandal (prior post) -- Sister Catherine had urged leaders of Boston's Roman Catholic Church "to warn parishioners about priests who had been accused of sexually abusing children." In a later deposition she said of decisions to return the accused to parishes:

'I expressed concern, consternation. What are we thinking of? What are you thinking of?'

(Prior May 17 posts are here, here, and here)

'Nuff said

(Taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)

That the Holy See is often treated as a state is deeply troubling, for several reasons. For one thing, the Catholic Church isn't truly a sovereign nation; to allow it to play one on the international stage perverts the meaning of statehood.

-- UCLA Law's Kal Raustiala and Lara Stemple, in a Los Angeles Times op-ed that assesses the Holy See (flag at left; prior posts) against standard measures of state sovereignty and finds it sorely lacking -- notwithstanding a Vatican official's claim that Pope Benedict XVI enjoys head-of-state immunity.

On January 22

On this day in ...
... 1521, an international conference that bears among the best names in history, the Diet of Worms, was convened by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor in Worms, a city in what is now southern Germany. The purpose of the meeting was to hear the renunciation or reaffirmation by the monk Martin Luther of dissident views. Luther did not recant, so that in May the emperor issued an edict that banned Luther's writings and declared him a heretic and enemy of the state. Thus was reinforced a schism between the Catholic and Protestant denominations, which would have profound effect on international relations within Europe for centuries to follow. (credit for German postage stamp commemorating Luther's appearance before the Diet)

(Prior January 22 posts are here and here.)

On October 16

On this day in ...
... 1928, Mary Daly (right) was born in Schenectady, New York. (photo credit) Following a Roman Catholic education that culminated in a Ph.D. in 1954 from St. Mary's College, Notre Dame, Indiana, Daly taught philosophy and earned a 2d doctorate at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, then joined the theology faculty at Boston College. She is a noted feminist theorist. Her 1st book, The Church and the Second Sex (1968), traced misogynism in the church. Daly's exclusion of men from some classes touched off a Title IX-and-tenure controversy that ended with a settlement resulting in her retirement. She maintains a website, dubbing herself a "radical elemental feminist."

(Prior October 16 posts are here and here.)

On July 27

On this day in ...
… 1884 (125 years ago today), divorce was reestablished in France. Divorce first became legal in France on September 20, 1792. The divorce law, which was extremely liberal even by modern standards, reflected the French Revolution's commitment to the rights of the individual and its antipathy to Roman Catholicism. In 1816, with the rise of Napoleon and the return of Roman Catholicism, divorce again was abolished. Judicial separation became the only option. When France's aristocracy voted against the divorce bills proposed during this time, their votes were as much a rejection of the revolutionary heritage as of the social effects of divorce. The law passed on this day departed from the liberal model of 1792 and instead was conservative, based on Napoleonic law.
… 1740, Jeanne Baré (below right), botanist and explorer, was born. She was probably the 1st woman to have circumnavigated the globe. Disguised as a man, Baré enlisted as personal valet and botanical assistant to the expedition's physician and naturalist shortly before it sailed from France in 1766. (image credit) According to the account of the expedition's master, Baré proved an expert botanist who had a reputation for courage and strength, and who went cheerfully on the most troublesome excursions over rugged terrain. Her companions did not learn that Baré was a woman until they reached Tahiti; there she confessed that she knew when she boarded that the ship would go around the world, and that such a voyage had raised her curiosity.

(Prior July 27 posts are here and here.)

On July 1

On this day in ...
... 1934 (75 years ago today), the United States' Roman Catholic bishops formed the Legion of Decency a lobbying group that issued ratings on movies. Films were categorized as "Class A: unobjectionable," "Class B: objectionable," or "Class C: condemned." An "objectionable" label would result if the film entailed suggestive dialogue, lack of moral compensation, lustful kissing, or acceptance of divorce. The lobby proved powerful, as film studios either pulled or altered projects in order to win the Legion's approval. For example, the plot of Belle of the Nineties (1934) was changed so that the lead actor, Mae West, was married by the end of the film. (image credit) Hollywood soon adjusted, adopting a more subtle but equally suggestive approach to “indecency.”
... 1994 (15 years ago today), Yasser Arafat (below left), Palestinian Liberation Organization chairman, returned to the Gaza Strip after 27 years in exile. Before boarding a helicopter from Cairo with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Arafat said: "Now I am returning to the first free Palestinian lands. You have to imagine how it is moving my heart, my feelings." His return followed the 1994 Israel-PLO pact known as the Cairo Agreement, which created self-rule for Palestinians in Gaza and Jericho in the West Bank. Arafat went on to become the elected president of the Palestinian National Authority in 1996. He would remain a symbolic figurehead for many years even after he lost prominence, and huge crowds would turn out for his funeral in November 2004.

(Prior July 1 posts are here and here. And a hat tip today to Rachel Prandini, 3L at the University of California, Davis, School of Law, for drafting these items!)

On June 6

On this day in ...
... 1654 (355 years ago today), Sweden's Queen Christina abdicated the throne, transferring her power to her cousin, Charles Gustavus of Pfalz-Zweibrücken. She had been born in December 1626, the only heir to her father the king, who'd ordered her educated as a boy. She became queen at age 6 when her father died. Among her achievements was to have "initiated the end of the Thirty Years War, culminating with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648." Immediately after her abdication Christina (left) began traveling, and soon made a public conversion from the Lutheranism of her childhood to Catholicism. Subsequently she became embroiled in various schemes to rule various places, none of which succeeded. She died in 1689 and was buried in St. Peter's in Vatican City, "an unusual honor for a woman." (image credit)
... 1973, faced with a backlog of 17,462 immigration cases, only a hundred of which it could process in any given month, the Canadian government launched a program to help undocumented immigrants become Canadian citizens. More than 50,000 persons would apply for landed immigrant status in the next 4 months.

(Prior June 6 posts are here and here.)

On July 29

On this day in ...

... 1968 (40 years ago today), media coverage focused on a new encyclical entitled Humanae Vitae, in which Pope Paul VI (right) rebuffed the recommendation of a majority of a Pontifical Commission, and thus "confirmed a ban on the use of contraceptives by Roman Catholics." Among the pope's "the most controversial" acts, it was reaffirmed in 1995 by a successor, John Paul II. This year's anniversary has stirred the issue again: among those commenting are "[m]ore than 50 dissident Catholic groups from around the world," which last week published, in an Italian newspaper, "an open letter asking Pope Benedict XVI to lift the church's ban on birth control." This group focused on HIV/AIDS as a reason for change; other commentators cited opposition among Catholic laypeople, sometimes by "majorities exceeding 80 percent," as well as links between overpopulation and global warming. Meanwhile, in the Philippines, Manila's archbishop supported the ban with this argument:

'If there is discipline in the marital bed, then there is discipline in the streets, there is discipline in schools, there is discipline in the government.'

... 1993 (15 years ago today), an Israeli appellate court overturned the conviction of John Demjanjuk. The court found insufficient evidence to support charges that Demjanjuk had committed war crimes as "Ivan the Terrible, a gas chamber operative at the death camp Treblinka, in Poland." Demjanjuk had been extradited to Israel by the United States. On his return, the United States undertook to deport him; however, no country has agreed to accept the Ukraine-born man, who'd immigrated to the United States in 1951. Earlier this month, a Spanish court announced that it would proceed with a war crimes action against Demjanjuk and 3 others. Initiator of the suit -- brought pursuant to the principle of universal jurisdiction -- was the NGO Equipo Nizkor. (credit for 1987 photo of Demjanjuk on trial in Israel)

On June 22

On this day in ...

... 1633 (375 years ago today), in the Convent of Minerva, Rome, Italy, 70-year-old scientist Galileo Galilei declared aloud the document at right, which stated that "with sincere heart and unfeigned faith I abjure, curse, and detest the aforesaid errors and heresies, and generally every other error, heresy, and sect whatsoever...." His heresy? Having published his findings that the earth revolves around the sun. Galileo's renunciation came immediately after leaders of the Roman Catholic Church banned the book and sentenced him to custody "at our pleasure."

... 1999, the parliament in Vilnius "overwhelmingly voted to ratify Protocol No. 6 to the European Convention on Human Rights," a move toward outlawing capital punishment in Lithuania.

Introducing Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

In this 1st post at IntLawGrrls blog, I will explain why I have selected as my transnational foremother Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648 or 1651-1695), a Mexican nun recognized for her extraordinary knowledge of the arts and sciences of her day and for her fierce defense of a woman's right to education. She has been called the first feminist of the Americas because of her outspoken advocacy of women's right to learn, a dangerous position to advance during the Inquisition in 17th century Mexico.
In one of her most famous writings, Reply to Sor Philothea—written in response to a letter from the bishop of Puebla, who had posed as "Sor Philothea", which reprimanded her for neglecting religious literature—Sor (that is, Sister) Juana vigorously defended women's right to be educated and to take up intellectual pursuits, citing over forty women who had made significant contributions throughout history. Her reply incited harsh criticism from the Church. Although toward the end of her life Sor Juana renounced worldly learning, disposed of her library of 4,000 volumes (considered at the time to be the largest private library in Mexico), and devoted herself to penance, her story and reputation “as the first published feminist of the New World and as the most outstanding writer of the Spanish American colonial period” remain.
Many of her writings can be found online using the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Project.

Papal Benediction for International Law

An encomium to international law is headline news this morning. Not, alas, because of its content, but rather because of its source: Pope Benedict XVI. In his address to the General Assembly of the United Nations yesterday, the pope warned against an international order dependent solely on the whims of sovereign countries. "Discernment, that is, the capacity to distinguish good from evil," he said,

shows that entrusting exclusively to individual States, with their laws and institutions, the final responsibility to meet the aspirations of persons, communities and entire peoples, can sometimes have consequences that exclude the possibility of a social order respectful of the dignity and the rights of the person.

Benedict (right) looked, rather, to transnational and international institutions as vehicles to promote human dignity, using a "common language" and not "a relativistic conception." For the pope religion is one such transnational vehicle, of course; "relativist" is, after all, an antonym of "catholic," itself a a synonym of "universal." Yet he devoted much of his address to a vehicle typically expressed on the temporal plane: human rights, the promotion of which Benedict called

the most effective strategy for eliminating inequalities between countries and social groups, and for increasing security.

Even as he found traces of human rights in the centuries-old writings of Catholic scholars like Augustine and de Vitoria, the pope found its contemporary source in a 20th C. secular instrument, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In tacit reprimand of those who would privilege civil and political rights over economic, social, and cultural rights -- or vice versa -- Benedict reaffirmed the 60-year-old decision to intertwine those rights:

[E]fforts need to be redoubled in the face of pressure to reinterpret the foundations of the Declaration and to compromise its inner unity so as to facilitate a move away from the protection of human dignity towards the satisfaction of simple interests, often particular interests. The Declaration was adopted as a 'common standard of achievement' (Preamble) and cannot be applied piecemeal, according to trends or
selective choices that merely run the risk of contradicting the unity of the human person and thus the indivisibility of human rights.

Perhaps most notable was the pope's embrace of "responsibility to protect," the international law concept that each nation-state has the primary duty to protect persons within its jurisdiction and control, but if it does not do so, the international community as a whole has a duty to protect those persons against, as the pope put it, "grave and sustained violations of human rights, as well as from the consequences of humanitarian crises, whether natural or man-made." Use of means permitted by the the law of the U.N. Charter is not "an unwarranted imposition or a limitation of sovereignty," the pope maintained, for "it is indifference or failure to intervene that do the real damage."
Some approach the "responsibility to protect" with skepticism, wondering whether the energy spent on pushing a new concept with a catchy acronym -- R2P -- might be better spent on working to strengthen the U.N. Security Council and other pre-existing mechanism that in the end would have to effect any such intervention. I'm among those skeptics, so too José Alvarez, Columbia law professor and immediate past president of the American Society of International Law. Despite disagreement on means, however, we all agree on the ultimate goal, greater enforcement of human rights. And so yesterday's strong statement in support of that objective, from one of the globe's premier norm-shapers, is welcome.


(cross-posted at Slate's Convictions blog)

On January 26, ...

... 1998 (10 years ago today), "With eyes narrowed and one index finger stabbing the air, President Clinton angrily denied today that he had had sexual relations with Monica S. Lewinsky, the former White House intern whose tape-recorded accounts of an affair with him now threaten his Presidency," the New York Times then reported. Bill Clinton said at the internationally reported Washington press conference at which he delivered an "emphatic denial": '''I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.'"
The next day his wife gave a televised interview. As the Times then reported, "Hillary Rodham Clinton charged today that the Whitewater prosecutor's sex-scandal investigation of her husband was part of a 'vast right-wing conspiracy' dedicated to destroying his Presidency. ...Asked how grave the accusations were, she replied, 'If all that were proven true, I think that would be a very serious offense.' But, she said, 'that is not going to be proven true.' She said the suspicions about her husband were baseless, 'part of the unfortunate, mean-spirited give-and-take of American politics right now.'''
On his last full day in office 2 years later, President Clinton, who had survived an impeachment trial before the U.S. Senate, accepted a deal in order to settle the matter; in so doing, he admitted telling falsehoods under oath.
... 1977, the Vatican affirmed its ban on admitting women to the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church.

On January 17, ...

... 1997, in an "unexpected" move, Ireland's High Court "granted the first divorce in modern Irish history." The decree was issued more than a month before the date that statutes enabling divorce -- enacted pursuant to a constitutional change that had been "narrowly approved" 14 months earlier by "voters in this overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country" -- were to have taken effect.
... 1996, "the black Congresswoman and scholar who stirred the nation with her Churchillian denunciations of the Watergate abuses of President Richard M. Nixon," Barbara Jordan, died in Texas from pneumonia brought on as a complication of leukemia. Jordan (left) had been born 59 years earlier in Houston, the daughter of a minister and a domestic worker. She attended segregated public schools and an all-black university before earning her law degree from Boston University, then returning home to Texas to set up a law practice. In the course of her career Jordan: was elected, in 1966, Texas' 1st African American state Senator, then, later, the 1st woman and 1st African American Texan elected to Congress; and, as shown in this video clip below, became in 1976 the 1st African American woman to give a keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. Upon her death the New York Times called Jordan "one of American politics' pioneer black women." (photo credit)