In association with the International Commission of Jurists

December 2012

05 Dec

[Jonathan Hafetz is an Associate Professor of Law at Seton Hall Law School and was previously a senior attorney at the ACLU’s National Security Project. He has served as counsel in numerous national security detention cases, including al-Marri v. Spagone.] The U.S. Senate last week approved an amendment to the FY 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) introduced by Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA)...

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05 Dec

A WTO Arbitrator has ruled that the reasonable period of time for the US to comply with the requirements in the US-COOL decision expires 10 months from the day the Panel and Appellate Body reports were adopted. Angry crowds surrounded the Presidential Palace in Cairo, Egypt, to protest President Morsi's recent decision to extend his own power, causing the President to leave the palace...

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04 Dec

Story here on how the CRPD went down. The tally was 61-38, five votes short of the two-thirds necessary for approval. On the one hand, the defeat demonstrates sovereigntism's staying power. The anti-internationalist Right has been energized by a flight of treaties baring the putative menace of global governance -- the Law of the Sea, the Arms Trade Treaty, and the Convention...

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04 Dec

The US has criticized Israel's decision to expand settlements in the E1 area, following the UNGA's decision to grant Palestine non-member state status. Five European countries (France, Denmark, Sweden, the UK and Spain) and the Australian government has also summoned the Israeli ambassador in protest. Despite the criticism, Israel plans to move ahead with the settlement construction. More analysis about the effect of...

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03 Dec

The phenomenon of land grabbing involves powerful transnational economic actors, including corporations, national governments, sovereign wealth funds, and private equity funds, that have searched for empty lands in distant countries that can serve as sites for fuel and food production in the event of future price spikes. Typically, the foreign investors enter long-term leases with national governments for 25 or 50...

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03 Dec

Syrian forces have pounded rebel-held areas of Damascus, trying to keep them away from the airport so flights can resume. After last Thursday's decision from the ICTY Appeals Chamber, acquitting former Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj and two others, Kosovo’s government has demanded an investigation into the actions of the lead prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, accusing her of abuse of power and filing unfounded...

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02 Dec

Look much beyond the blogosphere and you’ll be hard pressed to find many headlines about Jeh Johnson’s important speech at Oxford last week. But important it was. Here are three more of the reasons why I think so. 1. It is difficult to overstate the depth of the scholarly consensus that existed (before last week) around the view that when Congress...

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02 Dec

Upcoming Events The next session of the Joint International Humanitarian Law Forum takes place on December 5, 2012 at the IDC Radzyner School of Law. Dr. Ben Clarke will discuss his new article "Beyond the Call of Duty: Integration of International Humanitarian Law in Video Games and Battlefield Training Simulators". More information can be found here. Calls for Papers The International Community Law...

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01 Dec

A number of commentators have challenged my claim that Articles 11(2) and 12(3) of the Rome Statute would permit Palestine to accept the ICC's jurisdiction retroactively, whether as a member-state or on an ad hoc basis. Here, for example, is what my friend Jennifer Trahan wrote yesterday at IntLawGrrls: Even if an entity becomes a "state," should there be jurisdiction that...

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01 Dec

A recent meeting of the International Commission on the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT) has been heralded by environmental groups as a win for science in the management and conversation of scarce resources on the high seas.  One of the species within ICCAT’s jurisdiction is the Bluefin Tuna, a species that has famously declined, and some would claim, collapsed in...

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01 Dec

This week on Opinio Juris, Kevin Jon Heller wrote about Niger's offer to extradite Saadi Gaddafi to the ICC, should this be requested. Kevin also discussed the conditions attached by the UK for a vote in favour of Palestine's "non-member state" bid in the UN General Assembly. The requirement that the Palestinian authority does not apply for ICC or ICJ membership...

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