In association with the International Commission of Jurists

October 2008

09 Oct

The current issue of the New Yorker, week of October 13, 2008, special election issue, has a nice article,“Worlds Apart,” by Nicholas Lemann on the foreign policy differences between Obama and McCain - including a good discussion of each candidate’s foreign policy advisory team.  The article is worth reading for Lemann's interviews with each candidate's leading senior foreign policy people.  He describes...

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09 Oct

Serbia might want the ICJ to opine on the legality of Kosovo's independence, but it seems that the horse is already out of the barn.  Even Macedonia and Montenegro have now recognized Kosovo, the latter particularly irking the Serbian government: Montenegro's announcement sparked outrage in Belgrade, which along with key ally Russia has been vehemently opposing the split. Serbia in a...

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09 Oct

Following up on Peter’s earlier post on the foreign policy views of Sarah Palin, I note this letter that she wrote in September 2007 to Senators Stevens and Murkowski expressing her “strong support” for the ratification of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). She also seems to advocate the use of the International Tribunal for the...

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08 Oct

What is it with international prosecutors and their duty to disclose exculpatory evidence?  First the ICC stays the Lubanga trial because of the Prosecutor's abuse of Article 54.  And now the ICTR has had to formally reprimand its Prosecutor, Hassan Jallow, for failing to disclose exculpatory evidence in the high-profile Military II trial: In their ruling dated September 22, 2008, the...

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08 Oct

By a vote of 77 for, 6 against, and 74 abstaining, the UN General Assembly has referred to the ICJ the following question: Is the unilateral declaration of independence by the Provisional Institutions of Self-Government of Kosovo in accordance with international law? The draft resolution submitted by Serbia is here. According to the BBC, the US voted against the resolution, arguing that it was...

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08 Oct

I have spent a fair bit of time the past couple days reviewing the Supreme Court's docket for the upcoming term with an eye for any cases that might be of particular interest to our readers. Here is my list of the most important cases that are germane to our discipline. The big issues are (1) senior government...

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07 Oct

Last month, I mentioned that a BBC survey found nearly global support for Obama over McCain.  Now check out this "global electoral college" map put together by the editors of The Economist, Sarah Palin's favorite magazine: [caption id="attachment_4918" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption=""][/caption] The lonely red country is, not suprisingly, Georgia.  And the only pink country appears to be Macedonia. Hat-Tip: FP Passport....

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06 Oct

It's about time: The American Psychological Association has notified President Bush of a significant change in the association’s policy that limits the roles of psychologists in certain unlawful detention settings where the human rights of detainees are violated. The new policy is in response to actions that have occurred at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at so-called CIA...

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