In association with the International Commission of Jurists

April 2009

08 Apr

Last week, on April 1, the European Community (EC) signed onto the Hague Choice of Courts Convention. The treaty essentially seeks to replicate for covered commercial contracts a regime of judgment recognition in cases where parties exclusively agreed on a particular court for their disputes akin to the recognition of arbitral awards that occurs under the New York Convention.  The EC signature is...

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08 Apr

It is a rare thing indeed to find a published mediation decision involving a matter of such profound importance as the settlement of 9/11 litigation. Last month, Judge Hellerstein of the Southern District of New York published an order accepting the mediated settlement of 95 claims against the airlines for approximately $500 million. The order and accompanying mediator...

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07 Apr

Homework, people, homework: Bangladesh may request the International Criminal Court to put on trial Pakistani forces for alleged war crimes, a top official said Tuesday. 'We will take the matter to the International Criminal Court and seek the trial of the members of the Pakistani occupation forces who committed crimes against humanity during our liberation war,' State Minister for Liberation War...

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07 Apr

My long slow slide into complete disenchantment with the Obama administration continues.  Comes now, via my two favorite national-security law bloggers, Glenn Greewald and Scott Horton, a truly terrifying tale in which a nameless and faceless Department of Defense committee attempts to put Clive Stafford Smith, one of the world's great human-rights lawyers, in jail for...

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07 Apr

Our colleagues at International Law Observer asked me to write a post for them in honor of the blog's second anniversary.  I was delighted to do so, and the post is now up.  It's a long reflection on the pros and cons of international law blogging -- a timely subject, I think, given that I have been cited twice by...

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06 Apr

Over at Volokh, Eric Posner has a very interesting post today on the Koh nomination.  Here is a snippet: Foreign-law opponents, take heart! Koh is not a cosmopolitan who seeks to sacrifice American sovereignty to foreign gods. He is a liberal who wants to move American law to the left. International law serves as a handy vehicle, to be used or...

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05 Apr

I've always loved the New York Times.  I've been reading it since I was a kid.  But this comment by the paper's Executive Editor, Bill "Isn't the Iraq War Just Swell?" Keller, makes me want to cancel my subscription: Saving the New York Times now ranks with saving Darfur as a high-minded cause. Yeah, propping up the Gray Lady is just as...

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04 Apr

The more things change, the more things stay the same -- at least with this administration: He had become the most vocal opponent of the trial of Guantanamo Bay detainee Omar Khadr, taking on a position more akin to politician than lawyer and launching a two-year public and media campaign that landed him on the front pages of newspapers and inside...

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04 Apr

Michael Innes, over at ComplexTerrainLab (where I have been participating in a very interesting discussion with a bunch of historians and political scientists on PW Singer's Wired for War), posts up a comment on a new journal, Critical Studies on Terrorism, and a review of it in another journal, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism.  (My own favorite journal on terrorism,...

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