I suggested last week that the Vietnamese Agent Orange lawsuit against U.S. chemical companies had a good chance of success because the presiding judge was the legendary Jack Weinstein of Brooklyn. Boy was I wrong.Judge Weinstein dismissed the lawsuit today only 3 days after hearing arguments in the case finding that the plaintiffs had no basis for their claims under...
I noted rumors/reports of this below, and now the New York Times confirms that the U.S. has withdrawn from the Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. The Optional Protocol is the provision granting the International Court of Justice compulsory jurisdiction over disputes under the consular relations treaty and the basis for Mexico's (and Germany's) applications to the...
Medellin's attorneys have filed a motion to stay further proceedings in the Supreme Court on the domestic effect of the ICJ's judgment in Avena "while Petitioner pursues his remedies in Texas court, as contemplated by the President’s determination of February 28, 2005, implementing the judgment in [Avena] and the position taken by the United States in this Court." (Thanks to...
A while back, Marty Lederman had posted a comment asking some probing questions on my post on the legality of the current Iraq War and on the bombing of Serbia by NATO during the Kosovo conflict (both available here). While a variety of other issues have come up in the last week, I didn’t want to let his questions go...
There are rumors and/or reports that the U.S. will withdraw today from the Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention for Consular Relations. If true, this would probably bring to an end the litigation before the International Court of Justice on foreign nationals' rights who are facing death sentences in the United States. But it would raise lots of...
The International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia has indicted the Prime Minister of Kosovo, Ramush Haradinaj. Such a move had been rumored and Haradinaj had said that he would resign from office if indicted. On Tuesday he did just that. Although the substance of the indictment has not yet been made public; it is understood to stem from alleged incidents in...
As the major media finally begins to notice the Bush Administration's decision last week to order state courts to comply with the ICJ's ruling in Avena, Texas may be gearing up for a last stand in the ongoing Medellin saga.I stand by my prediction last week that the Bush Administration's intervention on the side of the ICJ will almost certainly...
I agree that Bolton is a strange appointment, and not just because he doesn't appear to like the U.N. very much. It is also strange because if Bolton hates the U.N. so much and thinks it is useless, it isn't likely he will accomplish very much in his new job. In other words, this appointment almost suggests Bolton is being...
Last Monday, the State Department released its 2004 Report on Human Rights conditions around the world. The report has been around since the Carter administration, when Congress began requiring human rights reporting as a centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy. Since the beginning, the report has been criticized globally as reflecting an American tendency to subject other countries to a higher...
When Bob Zoellick was named Deputy Secretary of State, it was largely viewed as a triumph of the internationalist "realists" over the unilateralist "neocons" in the Bush State Department. That conclusion may have been somewhat premature. Today it was announced that John Bolton, a prominent neocon and current undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, will be nominated...
El Salvador watchdog (or is it "watchblog"?) Tim Muth notes that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reversed a $54 million judgment against 2 Salvadoran generals for human rights violations during the 1980s. Those generals now live in the U.S. and were sued by their victims under that ubiquitous Alien Tort Statute.Courts have generally held that Alien...
Territorial squabbling continues in Southeast Asia as the Indonesian government announced it would NOT bring its simmering dispute with Malaysia over offshore undersea development rights to the International Court of Justice (where it previously lost a territorial case in 2002). It also announced that warships sent to enforce Indonesian claims of sovereignty would remain and that Malaysian airplanes were violating...
