In association with the International Commission of Jurists

October 2011

20 Oct

Interesting: Today FIDH and LDH filed a criminal complaint, together with an application to join the proceedings as a civil party against persons unknown before the Court in Paris concerning the responsibility of the company Amesys, a subsidiary of Bull, in relation to acts of torture perpetrated in Libya. This complaint concerns the provision, since 2007, of communication surveillance equipment to...

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20 Oct

A quick follow-up to Chris' post below - this started as a comment, but got too long, so I'm putting here as a general comment.  The question is one that many of us have asked from the outside, why the CIA in the conduct of drone operations?  And the implied broader questions, is it legal and anyway why is it a good policy idea, even if it is legal, for the CIA to be engaged directly in use of force operations?  The comment that follows is not attempting to defend a position; I'm just repeating in summary form what I've been told over the last few years by people here in Washington when I've asked these questions.  Take them for what they are worth; I'm not an insider to government and have no access to anything secret of any kind.  (Also, I would love to know Bobby Chesney's answers to the same questions, as an side inquiry to his project examining the legal issues in the merger of Title 10 and Title 50 operations - even just an informal comment on this would be useful.)  It goes on for a while, so I'll put it below the fold.
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19 Oct

David Cortright, the policy director of the Kroc Institute for International PeaceStudies at Notre Dame has posted an article to CNN.com looking at the prospect of the wide-spread proliferation of drone warfare. He begins: Drone technology is spreading rapidly. As many as 50 countries are developing or purchasing these systems, including China, Russia, India, Pakistan, and Iran. Even non-state actors are involved. Hezbollah reportedly...

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18 Oct

Just a quick note on the news reports about the internal Obama Administration legal debate over the use of cyberattacks in the Libya conflict. These reports seem to confirm Stewart Baker's complaint that cyberwar capabilities are being shaped by legal concerns as much as, if not more than, policy goals.  Two small observations: 1) Following David Fidler's point here, how is...

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18 Oct

The United States has finally decided to seize Michael Jackson's glove. Not that it has anything against Michael Jackson. The owner of the glove, however, is another matter. Teodorin Nguema Obiang, the son of Equatorial Guinea's dictator, has a thing for Michael Jackson memorabilia. He also has a taste for other luxury items, such as Bentlys,...

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17 Oct

Over the weekend, I read Amy B. Zegart’s new short book, Eyes on Spies, which deals with the persistent failures of Congress to engage in effective intelligence oversight.  (The book is in a Hoover Institution Press series that features short books — brisk and brief, readable in a single plane flight — focused on a single topic.)  I think the book is excellent and here is my review. A short bit:
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17 Oct

Last week I wrote that the Supreme Court's docket of international law cases was thin, thin, thin. Today the Court granted certiorari in two blockbuster cases, Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum/Shell and Mohamad v. Rajoub. The Question Presented in Kiobel is: “(1) Whether the issue of corporate civil tort liability under the Alien Tort Statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1350, is...

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16 Oct

In my previous post, I responded to Mike's attempt to explain the amicus brief's distortion of ICTY jurisprudence.  In this post, I want to respond to his similar attempt to explain the amicus brief's distortion of the Rome Statute.  There are two basic issues: Article 10 of the Rome Statute's relationship to customary international law, and the importance of Article...

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15 Oct

Congratulations to Professor Robert Sloane and BU Law School for a fine conference yesterday, “Ten Years In: Appraising the International Law of the ‘Long War’ in Afghanistan and Pakistan.” The conference was co-sponsored by the ASIL Lieber Society and the Naval War College. Update: Peter Margulies contributed a terrific summary of the panel sessions, posted here at Lawfare. The first panel addressed the future of COIN, and it included Professor Andrew Bacevich — not a lawyer, of course, and instead speaking as a well-known strategist, and lending an important interdisciplinary voice.  He offered a blistering critique of COIN (and pretty much every other strategic option as well, including counterterrorism via drones, I should add).  I was part of the second panel, on targeted killing and drones.  Michael Schmitt of the Naval War College offered a vigorous defense of drones as being essentially like any other weapon system, and on this occasion, at least, it was interesting to see how much agreement there was between him and Human Rights First’s Gabor Rona.
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14 Oct

There are numerous problems with Mike's response to my posts (here and here) about how the amicus brief distorts the ICTY's jurisprudence.  Before getting to them, though, it's important to acknowledge that he and I agree about one thing: decisions of the ICTY are not primary sources of international law.  That, too, is international law 101.  Even here, though, the...

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13 Oct

[Rishi Gulati lectures on Public International Law at the University of New South Wales in Australia.] At 9.24am on 12 October 2011, surrounded by chants of “democracy is dead”, a suite of 19 bills (the Clean Energy Bills or the Carbon Tax Bills) were passed in the Lower House of the Australian Parliament. It must be borne in mind that those 19 bills won’t...

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