I noted a few days ago that the OTP made a serious legal error when it suggested that Libya's challenge to the admissibility of the case against Saif could succeed even if Libya had to try Saif in absentia. Fortunately, the OTP has recognized its mistake and withdrawn its submission: The Prosecution wishes to retract its reference to the possibility of...
Breaking news: China has rejected arbitration under Annex VII of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea with the Philippines, dealing a heavy blow to the future of dispute settlement under UNCLOS (h/t China Law Prof Blog). According to this China Daily report, "Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines Ma Keqing had an appointment with officials from the Philippines' Foreign...
Over at the International Economic Law and Policy Blog, Rob Howse brings daily updates of the Seal hearings at the WTO. The New Zealand government has decided to go ahead with plans to introduce plain packaging for tobacco products, but the enactment of the actual legislation could be postponed depending on the outcome of the WTO and arbitration cases pending against similar Australian...
The Australian political world is all abuzz at the prospect of Assange running for the Senate in the upcoming federal election, which will be held on September 14. It's not completely clear whom he'll run against, but he will register as a voter in my home state of Victoria and intends to start a new political party, surprisingly entitled the...
The International Peace Institute (where, in full disclosure, I am spending part of my sabbatical as a Senior Visiting Advisor) has just released a new report entitled Peace, Justice and Reconciliation in Africa. The report, which will be of interest to those who follow the ICC and transitional justice issues, is available here. The report makes two recommendations: 1) The African Union's...
There is an interesting discussion by Stephen Walt over at Foreign Policy on why academic writing is so bad. It is a subject academics are reluctant to discuss, yet there is no doubt that much of what passes as legal scholarship is dull, disagreeable, undigestable. Here's Walt's take: The first problem is that many academics (and especially younger...
Bangladesh has amended its war crimes statute to allow the retrial of cases from 1971 amid protests. Human Rights Watch is concerned that the amendments will threaten the legitimacy of the tribunal. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights is proposing changes to its rules of procedure in order to strengthen the Inter-American system of human rights. ASIL has posted a new Insight on the International Law Issues in the Department...
[Michael W. Lewis is a Professor of Law at Ohio Northern University where he teaches International Law and the Law of War.] In his Hamdan opinion in 2006 Justice Stevens described the conflict between al Qaeda and the United States as a NIAC (his opinion did not address in any way the geographical scope of that NIAC). He then went on to measure the...
Calls for Papers After a successful first edition of Young Researchers Conference on Law, “Hëna e Plotë” Bedër University and University of Tirana are organizing the second edition of the series, Current Issues and Trends in International Law. Several topics will be covered and abstracts are due February 20, 2013. The conference Global Challenges in Public Private Partnerships: Cross-sectoral and Cross-disciplinary Solutions? will be held November...
My friend Jens Ohlin (Cornell) has just posted a very important article on SSRN entitled "Targeting and the Concept of Intent." Here is the abstract: International law generally prohibits military forces from intentionally targeting civilians; this is the principle of distinction. In contrast, unintended collateral damage is permissible unless the anticipated civilian deaths outweigh the expected military advantage of the strike;...
As far as I can tell, the Chinese government continues to pretend as if the Philippines' Law of the Sea arbitration claim doesn't exist. Articles like this one suggest the Philippines government continues to wait for some official or unofficial Chinese response. The February 22 deadline for China to appoint an arbitrator is fast approaching. There are obviously bigger things going...
I used to blog regularly about the Whale Wars, my name for the ongoing struggle between Japanese Whalers and those groups devoted to protecting whales. But I stopped almost three years ago when Australia filed its case against Japan in the ICJ, since nothing important seems to have happened since then. (Did we really need 22 months for written proceedings, when...
