Okay, I'm exaggerating. But only slightly. As Wells Bennett notes today at Lawfare, Judge Pohl has rejected al-Nashiri's contention that the US and al-Qaeda were not engaged in hostilities (an armed conflict in IHL terms) at the time of the acts alleged in his indictment -- primarily the attack on the USS Cole in 2000 -- thereby depriving the military commission...
I can’t imagine that the DOD-DOJ-DOS-DNI-CIA lawyers assigned to this one are getting much sleep these days. According to the Washington Post: The Obama administration is considering significant military backing for France’s drive against al-Qaeda-linked militants in Mali…. The loosely affiliated web of Malian militants in the country’s north includes members of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). But other...
The African Union (AU) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) are becoming active sanctioners in Africa. In the last few years, the AU and ECOWAS have applied sanctions in many African conflicts, including Mali, the Central African Republic, Ivory Coast, and Guinea-Bissau. This represents a lot of activity for the AU in particular, which is only 10...
Ordinarily I would leave events posting to our regular postings, but I fell behind and wanted to flag the upcoming Friday deadline for paper proposals for the "Law and Robotics Conference." It will take place on April 8-9, 2013, at Stanford Law School (the conference follows on the highly successful law and robotics conference that took place at University of Miami...
Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced that the United States would give Afghanistan its own fleet of aerial surveillance drones and would speed up the handover of detainees held by American forces. The European Court of Human Rights has found in Eweida and Others v. The United Kingdom (ECHR court document) that British Airways discriminated against a devoutly Christian employee by making her...
As Peggy noted a couple of weeks ago, the international-law blogosphere lost one of its most important collective voices when IntLawGrrls closed up shop. Fortunately, one of the most important individual voices within IntLawGrrls is back blogging -- Diane Marie Amann, who holds the Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law at my former academic home, the University of...
I argued yesterday that the Security Council cannot refer a situation to the ICC under Art. 13(b) of the Rome Statute while exempting nationals of non-States Parties from the Court's jurisdiction. Jennifer Trahan disagrees: I primarily disagree with Kevin’s first point. While it may be objectionable to have an exemption of nationals of non-States Parties, I actually think that the UN...
My friend and colleague David Caron, C. William Maxeiner Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, has been named the new Dean at the Dickson Poon School of Law at King's College London. The press release is here. I have known David Caron for over twenty years and always thought he would make an excellent Dean or...
A top US diplomacy team has been sent to Japan and South-Korea to douse the simmering tensions between the two nations. Facing strong electoral competition from EU skeptic parties, the Icelandic government has suspended negotiations on EU accession until after the elections in April. Navi Pillay has called for an international inquiry into widespread human rights abuses in North Korea during the past decades. Cuba has relaxed restrictions on Cuban's freedom to...
My thanks to Jennifer for contributing her post, which makes the case for referring the situation in Syria to the ICC. I don't necessarily disagree with her bottom line, but I have my hesitations. And I want to offer a few thoughts about the idea of a referral in general. First, as Jennifer notes, the letter states that a Security Council...
[Jennifer Trahan is associate clinical professor at the Center for Global Affairs at the NYU School of Continuing and Professional Studies (NYU-SCPS). She is also chair of the American Branch of the International Law Association International Criminal Court Committee and was a member of the American Bar Association’s 2010 International Criminal Court Task Force.] Today, January 14, 57 U.N. Member States from...
[Peter Margulies is a Professor of Law at the Roger Williams University School of Law focusing on the balance of liberty, equality and security in counter-terrorism, and author of Law's Detour: Justice Displaced in the Bush Administration (NYU Press 2010).] The days of Donald Rumsfeld chiding “Old Europe” are gone, but targeted killing has renewed debate on counter-terrorism strategies between the US and...
