In association with the International Commission of Jurists

September 2009

16 Sep

Charlie Savage has a piece in today's NY Times on the OLC's recent memo advising the State Department that it may ignore congressional constraints attached to the 2009 foreign appropriations bill that purport to prohibit U.S. diplomats from attending meetings led by officials from states designated as state sponsors of terrorism on the ground that such constraints unconstitutionally limit...

|
16 Sep

The U.S. officially took its seat at the UN Human Rights Council on Monday.  Yes, it will be joining a deeply flawed institution that, under its prior form as the HR Commission included in its membership Zimbabwe and Sudan* --hardly paragons of human rights compliance.  But it is better for the U.S. to be inside the institution, working to bring...

|
15 Sep

You can find all 574 pages of it here.  From the press release: The UN Fact-Finding Mission led by Justice Richard Goldstone on Tuesday released its long-awaited report on the Gaza conflict, in which it concluded there is evidence indicating serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law were committed by Israel during the Gaza conflict, and that Israel committed...

|
14 Sep

Although often critical of Israel, I have always been sympathetic to Israeli claims that the UN Human Rights Council has deliberately appointed individuals to investigate conditions in the Palestinian territories who were either actually biased against Israel or who at least could not avoid the appearance of bias.  I was completely opposed, for example, to the HRC's decision to appoint...

|
14 Sep

Adjudicating Europe, a new blog dedicated to EU law, has just launched.  Here's how the editors describe it: EU Law, despite its expansion and maturity, has not yet developed a comparable blogsphere of its own. Languages, the vastness of its scope, or a tendency to work and discuss inside national communities, have probably influenced this lack of blogging culture among EU...

|
13 Sep

1. All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) It is a curious feature of international human rights that we are reluctant to speak about foundations. As Jacques Maritain put it with respect...

|
13 Sep

My friend Jens Ohlin, who teaches at Cornell, has posted an important new essay on SSRN, "The Torture Lawyers."  Here is the abstract of the essay, which is forthcoming in the Harvard International Law Journal: One of the longest shadows cast by the Bush Administration’s War on Terror involves the fate of the torture lawyers who authored or signed memoranda approving...

|
11 Sep

Joel Trachtman, whose book with my colleague Jeff Dunoff on Ruling the World is just out, also has a new paper on the relationship of domestic political coalitions and compliance with international law.  Of course, compliance theory has taken a strong hold in international law (and international relations) scholarship of late.  For the most part, however, that work has had...

|
10 Sep

I don't have any deeper insight into the situation than Ken, but there certainly has been pressure on the Prosecutor to investigate Afghanistan for some time -- both because it's not in Africa and because of US/NATO involvement in the armed conflict there.  It is important to stress, though, that the OTP has not formally opened an investigation; it is...

|