Who knew that a single treaty-provision could get so much attention? Well, post-Hamdan, we’ve certainly seen a lot of discussion of whether the Supreme Court was correct to view Common Article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions as applicable to the President’s military commissions. And, the debate continues as Congress weighs whether and how to accept the Supreme...
As Julian noted Monday, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger have announced an agreement on collaboration in the fight against global warming. The text of what was agreed can be found here. It’s titled, “United Kingdom and California Announcement on Climate Change and Clean Energy Cooperation,” followed by a mission statement in which California (CA) and...
For years, researching U.S. treaty-making was a daunting task. Publication of U.S. treaties and other international agreements in the United States Treaties (UST) and Treaties and Other International Agreements (TIAS) series lagged years (if not decades) behind. Other materials (e.g., reservations, instruments of ratification, the travaux preparatoire) were often unavailable, incomplete, or required checking multiple sources. And...
Former Khmer Rouge Military leader Ta Mok died this past Friday, July 21, in a Cambodian military hospital. Although I spent one of my most memorable evenings ever having drinks with Dith Pran, I’m no expert on Cambodia or recent efforts at bringing the Khmer Rouge to justice. But, one of my new colleagues, Jaya Ramji-Nogales, is an...
It may not be officially dead, but today the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations moved onto life support. In what effectively appears to be its death knell, the WTO suspended negotiations on all fronts, and press reports quote some negotiators as suggesting that it will be months, if not years, before they resume. But, as I mentioned...
As I mentioned recently, the Bush Administration has long had a reputation for disdaining treaties. And, there’s some pretty substantial anecdotal evidence to back up that perception: e.g., withdrawing from the ABM treaty, dissing the Kyoto Protocol, announcing an intention not to ratify the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court, not to mention its more recent efforts...
Kevin earlier today asked about the extraterritorial reach of human rights treaties. But, what about U.S. statutes – how far do they reach? What exactly constitutes an extraterritorial application of U.S. law? On July 6, the Ninth Circuit addressed this issue in Pakootas v. Teck Cominco Metals, Ltd. (see here). The Ninth Circuit ruled that “slag” metal discharges from Teck...
Jurist has a copy of the actual July 7, 2006 memorandum from Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England indicating that, in the aftermath of Hamdan, Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions “applies as a matter of law to the conflict with Al Qaeda.” The Memo goes on to indicate that although DOD understands that “aside from the military...
As my new colleague Peter Spiro has already noted, this morning the Senate Judiciary Committee is holding hearings to discuss how Congress should respond to last week’s decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and its invalidation of the Bush Administration’s military commissions program. Ironically, this afternoon, the Committee will get a chance to hear from one of the architects of that...
It’s no secret that the Bush Administration has little love for treaties, and I’d expect the Supreme Court’s recent pronouncements will do little to improve that outlook. Still, it’s worth recalling that the Bush Administration does not view all treaties as fatally flawed. There are a few (increasingly rare?) exceptions. For example, on Wednesday the United States and Switzerland became...
Yesterday, the United Nations Human Rights Council opened its inaugural session in Geneva. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan urged the new 47-member body to break with its much maligned predecessor, the U.N. Human Rights Commission: [T]he Council's work must mark a clean break from the past. That must be apparent in the way you develop and apply the universal periodic...
For the last several years, the number of pro-whaling states in the International Whaling Commission (the constituent organ for the International Whaling Convention) has been steadily increasing. In particular, Japan, renowned for its “scientific whaling,” has courted various states to join the Convention and support its push for more whaling through a regional management scheme that would alleviate the moratorium...
