The Sudan Tribune is reporting that the presiding judge in William Ruto's trial has threatened to have Ruto arrested if he continues to comment publicly on his case: October 2013 (THE HAGUE) – Kenya’s Vice President William Ruto was on Friday warned by the presiding judge in his trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) to desist from making statements about...
[Michael D. Goldhaber serves as Senior International Correspondent and "The Global Lawyer" columnist for The American Lawyer and the ALM media group. His writes widely on human rights and corporate accountability, international arbitration, and global multiforum disputes. His e-book on Chevron will be published next year by Amazon.] The ongoing media circus surrounding the Chevron v. Donziger trial in New York federal court makes it easy to forget that the arbitration between...
The government of Japan has issued a new policy authorizing its military to shoot down foreign (read: Chinese) drones that enter the airspace over the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea. China's Ministry of Defense has issued a statement suggesting that such an action would be an "act of war" and declaring that China's manned and unmanned flights...
Events On November 12, the T.M.C. Asser Instituut in The Hague will launch the International Crimes Database (ICD). This platform offers a comprehensive database on international crimes adjudicated by national, international and internationalized courts and will provide access to a range of information not just for lawyers and judges but also for students, academics, families and communities of victims of crimes,...
I am honored to have such a brilliant and prominent set of interlocutors from across the world discussing my book, The Electronic Silk Road: How the Web Binds the World Together in Commerce. I am grateful for the sharp insights each of my commentators brings, and humbled by the praise they offer. Each of the commentators has selected a different aspect of the book to focus on in his or her remarks, and so I will respond to each in seriatim, chronologically.
Professor Michael Birnhack (Tel-Aviv) focuses on glocalization—the conforming of a global service to the local laws of the countries that it serves. Professor Birnhack is familiar with this phenomenon, having studied it himself in connection with the transfiguration of global copyright as it encounters local norms. Both glocalization and and its limiting principle—harmonization—are highly complicated processes. Professor Birnhack wisely observes that glocalization and harmonization are both subject to power variations across the world. This is an important insight—certain countries, industries, corporations, transnational organizations or interests are likely to hold more sway than others in determining any eventual balance between glocalization and harmonization. That would probably be true even if there were a global plebiscite, a possibility that seems quite remote. But Professor Birnhack notes that these shortcomings in the glocalization and harmonization principles I suggest do not render them unwise, as other alternatives are likely to prove worse along the metric he describes.
The University of Bern’s Mira Burri , editor with Professor Thomas Cottier of an important collection of papers on digital trade governance, elegantly describes the major shifts in international trade made possible by the Internet. Her broad perspective makes her an ideal interlocutor. She strikingly observes that “we are faced with a radically ‘messy’ governance landscape with many and overlapping institutions and actors of state and non-state nature, the effects of whose actions transcend national boundaries and cannot be neatly contained and controlled.” She characterizes the principles proposed in The Electronic Silk Road as follows: “The freeing of trade is matched by a batch of principles of regulating trade that are meant to ensure balance, provide for security and trust in cyberspace.”
I proposed that Opinio Juris invite Professor Paul Stephan (Virginia) because I admire his writing and hoped for a critical voice, and he hasn’t disappointed.
I had the privilege last week of speaking in London at a superb Chatham House/Doughty St. Chambers symposium on the ICTY's recent high-profile acquittals in Perisic, Gotovina, and others. My co-panelists were John Jones, QC, Saif Gaddafi's ICC-appointed lawyer, and Elies van Sliedregt, the Dean of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Chatham House's Elizabeth Wilmshurst was the moderator. I don't believe the symposium...
This week on Opinio Juris, Ken contributed a post on legally distinct corporate entities and agency theory in Bauman v Daimler AG, Chris wrote about Russia's Realpolitik towards former USSR members that are seeking closer contact with the EU, and Deborah wrote about due process in targeting. Julian noticed how Russia had taken a leaf out of China's book by walking out of an...
Wim Muller, an associate fellow in international law at Chatham House, takes issue with my observation that China's rejection of Annex VII UNCLOS Arbitration may have influenced Russia's similar rejection of UNCLOS proceedings in the Greenpeace arbitration. Other commenters take issue with my further claim that Russia's rejection is another "body blow" to ITLOS dispute settlement. I offer my ("typically...
It has been an eventful news week in the universe of U.S. targeting debates. Amnesty and Human Rights Watch released their reports detailing some of the civilian costs of drone strikes. A bit earlier, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and countering terrorism, Ben Emmerson, issued an interim report on his findings thus far about targeted killing (though I think...
In a unanimous decision, the Appeals Chamber has reversed Trial Chamber V(a) and held that Ruto is required to continuously attend his trial, with exceptions to be granted only in exceptional circumstances. The decision is limited to Ruto, but it clearly applies to Kenyatta, as well, whom Trial Chamber V(b) has also excused from continuous presence. It's decisions like these that make...
Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Middle East Yemen has taken control over hundreds of al-Qaeda inmates who tried to escape after they staged a mutiny in Sanaa prison. The Friends of Syria group of Western and Arab foreign ministers are meeting in London hoping to persuade opposition leaders to attend a peace conference in...
