A law named for the victim, Kendra Webdale, allows courts to compel the mentally ill to submit to treatment.
The first law of its kind in the nation, it allows courts to grant defendants new trials in cases in which forensic science has evolved.
The current law allows courts to hand down a sentence of less than seven years for "adequate and special reasons," a provision omitted in the bill.
In that case, which started in Alabama, the court said the federal law still allows courts to require preclearance in places where it finds intentional discrimination.
In essence the appeals chamber (also chaired by Judge Meron) found that there exists no legal standard that allows courts to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate military targets.
A separate law allows courts to impose punitive fines in libel cases on newspapers that refuse to join the supposedly "voluntary" body.
This allows courts to make the right bail decisions, take bad character into account and, on conviction, give sentences which reflect previous offending history.
Florida's so-called right-to-die law allows courts to consider testimony about the wishes of someone on life support if the person left no written directive.
Section 4 allows courts to declare legislation to be incompatible with the act but this does not make the law invalid.
It was the first conviction under a law that allows courts here to prosecute crimes in other countries if they constitute violations of international law.
