The ICTR began last month the trial of Simon Bikindi, (indictment), who is accused of six counts of genocide, for writing and recording popular songs that, according to his indictment, incited and encouraged genocide. (Articles by Guardian, Reuters, BBC, and VoA.) Bikindi had earned himself the nickname "Rwanda's Michael Jackson" (presumably for the popularity of his songs). The Prosecutor...
My colleague Craig Green has posted on SSRN a revised version of a piece--Wiley Rutledge, Executive Detention, and Judicial Conscience at War--that's just been published by the Washington University Law Review. The article analogizes the decisions of Wiley Rutledge in the post-WWII context to the Supreme Court's recent decisions related to detainees and terrorism. Here's the abstract: ...
Following up belatedly on Duncan's post, I just wanted to point readers to a previous attempts we had at Opinio Juris to draft a list of "International Law 'Must Reads.'" ...
Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk has won the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature. Some of you may remember that last year there was a dust-up when Harold Pinter, the British playrwright, won the Prize although many considered it to be Pamuk’s year. (We debated the politics of the issue here on Opinio Juris.) Pinter had made recent headlines for...
See this editorial from today's Washington Post. ...
On Wednesday the House of Lords issued an important decision on libel law in the case of Jameel v. Wall Street Journal. The New York Times has a report here and the London Times has reports here and here. More later. ...
Sorry to contribute to this phenomenon, but John Yoo’s new book War By Other Means: An Insider’s Account of the War on Terror is now out from Atlantic Monthly Press (not affiliated with the Atlantic Monthly, I was surprised to discover, though it's something of an explanation), and shouldn’t go ignored. As signaled by the subtitle, this is not...
Quick story. A friend of mine who teaches at a prestigious law school in Israel said to me recently that he experiences tremendous pressure to publish law review articles in English rather than Hebrew. He said for reputational reasons his academic peers in Israel strongly prefer English-language publications over Hebrew-language publications. That makes sense to me for...
As I noted a few weeks back, PrawfsBlawg is hosting a research canons series, where readers can post thoughts on the most useful resources within a given discipline for new scholars seeking to gain a foothold in that field. Today, they're seeking input on international law. I've posted a few of my general public international law favorites over...
Andrew Guzman has these interesting thoughts on the subject over at the International Economic Law and Policy Blog. He wonders why the field is so dominated by trade law. Among his answers, I suspect that it's driven by the relative institutionalization of trade law relative to other components of IEL. A related possibility is that trade law...
Here is an excerpt of a letter from a Marine stationed in Iraq that was recently published in Time magazine. As Time put it, "His honest but wry narration and unusually frank dissection of the mission contrasts sharply with the story presented by both sides of the Iraq war debate, the Pentagon spin masters and fierce critics." Rather than...
I usually avoid commenting on Gitmo issues, deferring to those who have far more competence in national security issues than I. But I can't help but point out how sad this story makes me: The Navy lawyer who led a successful Supreme Court challenge of the Bush administration's military tribunals for detainees at Guantanamo Bay has been passed over for...
