Some interesting developments at the international tribunals over the past few weeks: Most notably, Saddam Hussein has asked the ICC to investigate his alleged mistreatment by the U.S. while incarcerated during trial. Whatever the substantive merits of the allegations, the ICC has no jursidiction to investigation them, because neither Iraq nor the U.S. has ratified the Rome Statute. The...
The new UN Human Rights Council is holding an emergency session today in Geneva. The agenda: A resolution condemning Israeli actions in the current war between Israel and Hezbollah. This is supposed to be the new and improved Human Rights Council, the one that will take seriously its charge to address human rights violations everywhere. Yet, since...
This post by Suzanne Nossel and David Greenberg at Democracy Arsenal is a pretty accurate take on what Senator Joe Lieberman's defeat to Ned Lamont in Tuesday's primary means for the national security strategy of the Democratic party. Neither the "security-minded" liberals — who fear that Lieberman's defeat represents proof the party has been captured by the isolationist left...
From the BBC: They planned to detonate liquid explosives on up to 10 planes. They would have smuggled it on board hidden in drinks, electronic devices and other "common objects". At UK airports on Thursday - with the country on its highest terror alert of "critical" - bottles of water were taken from passengers and mothers asked to taste their...
The Eleventh Circuit sitting en banc rendered an interesting decision yesterday involving the conviction of five defendants who conspired in the Cuban government's downing of the "Brothers To The Rescue" airplane. In United States v. Campa, five defendants who acted as unregistered Cuban intelligence agents were convicted of conspiring to commit murder. The defendants appealed their convinctions and...
On Monday the Ninth Circuit issued one of the most important decisions interpreting the Alien Tort Statute since Sosa. In Sarei v. Rio Tinto, the Ninth Circuit addressed whether corporate liability can apply to human rights abuses committed by Papua New Guinea ("PNG"). Plaintiffs allege that Rio Tinto and the PNG government quelled an uprising in 1990 that...
I missed this item from last week noting that the U.S. Senate gave its approval last Friday to the Council of Europe's Cybercrime Treaty. I have also not been following the debate over the treaty, which is opposed by some civil libertarian types and former Clinton impeachment manager Bob Barr. Here is the basic complaint, which sounds scary enough, but...
I wanted to point out two relatively new websites concerning the UN and international law that have come to my attention. The first is the United Nations and the Individual, a blog co-authored by Otto Spijkers, a Leiden PhD candidate, and Richard Norman, an educator in South Korea with a background in international conflicts. The blog covers a wide...
Earlier this week Justice Kennedy provided the keynote speech at the ABA annual meeting in Hawaii. The speech is pure Kennedy in all his earnestness. The full transcript is not available but the video is here. Here is an excerpt of the speech: We are at another turning point in the history of the law…. [W]e are...
Saturday was the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Tens of thousands of Japanese thronged Peace Park in downtown Hiroshima to commemorate the attack, which killed nearly 140,000 people. From all accounts, the ceremony was deeply moving, a tribute to the need to abolish nuclear weapons once and for all: During the ceremony, children dressed in black...
An Argentine court has sentenced a former policeman to 25 years imprisonment for "disappearing" a couple and abducting their child in 1978, during Argentina's "Dirty War": A federal court in Buenos Aires sentenced Julio Héctor Simón to 25 years in prison for the illegal arrest and torture of José Poblete Roa and Gertrudis Hlaczik de Poblete, a Chilean/Argentine couple who “disappeared”...
Law Professor Eugene Kontorovich has this thought-provoking op-ed in today's New York Sun arguing that the current proposal for a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon violates a bedrock principle of international law: That nations cannot gain territory through the aggressive use of force. Here's an excerpt: The most surprising aspect of international proposals for a ceasefire in the Israel-Lebanon conflict is...
