In association with the International Commission of Jurists

June 2009

28 Jun

The New York Times (along with much of the mainstream media) has "rediscovered" cyberwar of late (see here, here, here, and here).  Today's story revives longstanding differences between Russian government proposals to regulate cyberwarfare by treaty versus existing U.S. preferences to place the issue in more informal law enforcement cooperation networks: Russia favors an international treaty along the lines of those negotiated for...

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28 Jun

Moises Naim of Foreign Policy has an essay in the new issue called "Minilateralism: The magic number to get real international action." His piece has spawned reactions from the bloggers at FP.com. Naim's essay is the latest volley in a debate on "big" or "small" multilateral action should be; however, although he and other bloggers do a good job setting out the...

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27 Jun

The organization whose board meeting I'm attending in Prague is the Media Development Loan Fund, and you can see its newly revamped website at mdlf.org.  It is a media assistance organization, one that focuses on helping media companies - newspapers, radio, TV, internet - in the emerging market and developing world that provide a sizable amount of quality newsreporting.  Unlike...

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27 Jun

A quick update on the OTP's efforts to include genocide charges in Bashir's arrest warrant.  Pre-Trial Chamber I has now granted leave to appeal the issue I've discussed before -- whether it misunderstood Article 58's "reasonable grounds" requirement when it rejected the genocide charges. It's a very defensive decision, almost certainly written by Judge Steiner, who is the only holdover from...

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27 Jun

Omri Casspi has become the first Israeli basketball player to be selected in the first round of the NBA draft.  Casspi was drafted #23 by the Sacramento Kings, which also feature players from Spain (Sergio Rodriguez), Argentina (Andres Nocioni), and Slovenia (Beno Udrih). Basketball fans know that Casspi's Israeli team, Maccabi Tel Aviv, is one of the world's best.  The team...

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26 Jun

It seems likely that Spain is about drastically curtail its universal jurisdiction law--the law that had been used by Magistrate Baltasar Garzon to go after Augusto Pinochet--such that it really won't be universal jurisdiction at all.  While some (many?) of my international law colleagues may view this as a step backwards, I welcome this adjustment as a prudent move that will foster...

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26 Jun

Frequent Opinio Juris commentor Patrick O'Donnell has an informative post at Ratio Juris about shari'ah and jurisprudence in Islam. It begins: Having recently introduced the subjects of constitutionalism and democracy vis-à-vis Islam, I thought it would help to say a few basic things about Sharī‘ah and fiqh, in particular as they have bearing upon our concerns about human rights and democracy, concerns of...

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25 Jun

Eric Posner is putting up two posts on the Koh debates, over at Volokh Conspiracy (first one is here, second is linked to it).  I'll be lite-blogging the next little bit, as I have board meetings for a nonprofit private equity fund for the next few days in Europe.  I want to start discussing more finance and development finance topics...

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24 Jun

Foreign Policy.com reports: "Cloture passed on a 65-31 vote," a Congressional source relays at 11:30am. "There was applause in the Senate gallery after the vote was announced. Republicans are threatening to exercise their right to use all 30 hours of floor debate before permitting a final vote, so Koh may not be formally confirmed until tomorrow." See also IntLawGrrls.  Yesterday, by the...

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