In association with the International Commission of Jurists

November 2006

24 Nov

A judge in France has issued a series of arrest warrants against current high-level Rwandan government officials alleging they were involved in the 1994 assassination of President Juvenal Habyarimana, the assassination that many believe sparked the eventual genocide by Hutus against the Rwandan Tutsi minority. This isn't a case involving international human rights law directly. Rather the French judge is...

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23 Nov

We have certain images in our minds about that first Thanksgiving. It usually involves bountiful harvests, amicable relations with the Indians, and prayerful thanksgiving to Providence for his manifold blessings. Well, it wasn't quite that simple. Although there are various versions of the "first Thanksgiving," one event that has a strong claim to it occurred at Plymouth,...

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23 Nov

If true, this is fantastic news:Strong hints have emerged that the Vatican is preparing to change its policy on the use of condoms in the fight against Aids, after a 200-page study on the question, commissioned by the Pope, was passed to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for consideration. "This is something that worries the Pope a lot,"...

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22 Nov

[Opinio Juris has requested David Sloss' permission to post this email he published on a international law list serve and he has kindly obliged] I finally was able to read the Texas court’s decision in Medellin. It strikes me that the court almost completely ignored the strongest argument in favor of the petitioner. That argument can be summarized as...

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22 Nov

An astute reader forwarded this article to me about the role that the Library of Congress plays in assisting the Supreme Court and federal appellate courts in researching foreign and international law materials: Despite harsh criticism of the citation of foreign law in American court decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court and the federal appellate courts solicit and are supplied with numerous...

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21 Nov

As a number of critics of the U.N. reform process argued last year, the much-ballyhooed new United Nations Human Rights Council was unlikely to improve upon its much-derided predecessor. Those critics have been largely proven right by the Human Rights Council's performance thus far. Steadfastly one-sided and relentlessly obsessed with Israel, the Council has failed to build any...

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21 Nov

Washington & Lee Law Library has just updated their law journal rankings. Here is their 2006 list of the top twenty-five comparative and international law journals based on total journal and case cite counts. (You get a different result if you include "impact factor" into the mix.) 1 American Journal of International Law 2 Tulane Law Review 3...

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20 Nov

I noted a couple of weeks ago that the Iraqi High Tribunal's failure to release the written verdict at the same time that it announced Saddam's conviction was strong evidence that, despite my earlier skepticism, the announcement was timed to influence the U.S. elections. Well, the written verdict still has not been publicly released — making the inference of...

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20 Nov

The logical conclusion of Chertoff, Gonzales, et al.'s reactionary hostility to international law?This is where we've arrived in this country: You have the constitutional right to burn an American flag, but you can get into trouble for simply flying a foreign one. At least you can in the 30,000-person town of Pahrump, Nevada, which is close to Las Vegas and even...

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