U.S. Secretary of State Rice is visiting Canada this week in a likely futile attempt to defuse a worsening U.S.-Canada trade dispute over softwood lumber. As I've blogged in the past (here and here), U.S. relations with Canada have been steadily worsening over the past few years over a variety of issues. But the refusal of the U.S. to comply...
Before we get too excited (see Chris' post here) about the U.N.'s wonderful effectiveness in the investigation of Harari's death, it is worth pointing out that allegations of high level U.N. interference have been circulating almost from the moment the report was released. In particular, the electronic version of the U.N. Harari report contained embedded text of last-minute changes. According...
Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California, has introduced a potentially revolutionary amendment to every international lawyer's favorite statute, the Alien Tort Statute. While Sen. Feinstein calls her amendment a "clarification," it looks to me like she is proposing a near-complete evisceration of the Alien Tort Statute as we (international lawyers) know it. And such an evisceration is almost certainly...
The U.S. entered into a new round of negotiations this week with the E.U. for "open skies" air transport agreements. These agreements govern the terms of air traffic rights between U.S.-based and E.U. based-carriers, and the intention is to liberalize these rules so that air carriers can fly to directly to more cities on each side. In other...
Sometimes, countries really act in ways that don't appear motivated by narrow material self-interest. Australia's recent campaign to win a Security Council referral against Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe is a good example of this type of moralist foreign policy. Australia has no obvious national interests at stake in Southern Africa. It stands pretty much alone in...
Sometimes being virtuous pays off. The Thomas J. Dodd Prize in International Justice and Human Rights has been awarded jointly to Justice Richard Goldstone and U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour. The two well-known figures from the human rights community will share the prize of $75,000. Thomas Dodd, the father of current U.S. Senator from Connecticut Chris Dodd,...
The ICC Prosecutor has unsealed the arrest warrants issued in July 2005 against five leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). The warrants can be found here. Not surprisingly, these warrants allege pretty grisly crimes including:murder, abduction, sexual enslavement, mutilation, as well as mass burnings of houses and looting of camp settlements ...
Speaking of Grotius, a Dutch court ruled this week that it would not extradite an alleged Al Qaeda suspect to the U.S. because his fundamental legal rights could not be guaranteed. The Court held, according to AP: “[t]he risk that the [individual] will be confronted with suspicions of involvement in the al Qaeda network is certainly not imaginary. … This...
In another sign of China's arrival as major world power, China's space program successfully put two Chinese "taikonauts" into orbit Wednesday using their Shenzhou VI rockets. The state-run People's Daily newspaper has set up a website for tracking the progress of the taikonauts here. This is yet another boost to China's self-confidence (the 2008 Olympics in Beijing is another) and...
For better or for worse, the Arctic ice caps may be melting, opening up lots of virgin territory for economic development, the NYT reports. It may also raise the stakes over U.S. non-ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).There appears to be lots of money to be made from melting ice caps. A Denver entrepreneur,...
Lest it seems like the U.S. Senate is the graveyard of all treaties, it is worth noting that the U.S. Senate has recently ratified two conventions: the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime and the Inter-American Convention Against Terrorism as well as a Protocol of Amendment to the International Convention on the Simplification and Harmonization of Customs Procedures. The...
I have been travelling today, so I don't have much more energy left to respond to Peggy's post, most of which I agree with anyway. Let me just say that I think the somewhat sketchy news reports on the actual substance of the legislation passed by the Senate may have misled Peggy on the scope of the Senate's amendments. As...
