Al-Kateb v Godwin was an important Australian court case decided in the High Court of Australia on 6 August 2004. It concerned a stateless man who was detained under the policy of mandatory immigration detention. His application for a protection visa had been denied, and because he was stateless no other country would accept him. The issue in the case was whether indefinite immigration detention was lawful, and the court ultimately decided that it was. The court considered two main questions, firstly, whether the Migration Act 1958 (the legislation which governs immigration in Australia) permitted a person in Al-Kateb's situation to be detained indefinitely, and secondly, if it did, whether that was permissible under the Constitution of Australia. A majority of the court decided that the Act did allow indefinite detention, and that the Act was not unconstitutional.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Kateb_v_Godwin

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1009: The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a Christian church now within the walled Old City of Jerusalem, was destroyed by the "mad" Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Holy_Sepulchre)

1016: Danish forces led by Canute the Great decisively defeated Edmund Ironside in the Battle of Ashingdon, gaining control over most of the Kingdom of England. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ashingdon)

1851: Moby-Dick, a novel by Herman Melville, was first published as The Whale. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moby-Dick)

1922: The British Broadcasting Company was founded by a consortium to establish a network of radio transmitters to provide a national broadcasting service in the United Kingdom. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Broadcasting_Company)

1954: Texas Instruments introduced the first transistor radio. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_radio)

_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:

Give me my freedom for as long as I be All I ask of livin' is to have no chains on me All I ask of livin' is to have no chains on me And all I ask of dyin' is to go naturally... And when I die, and when I'm gone There'll be one child born, in our world To carry on, to carry on... -- Laura Nyro (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Laura_Nyro)