The International Criminal Court has issued indictments for the five leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda. These are the first warrants the ICC has ever issued, although the ICC website has no official info on these warrants.According to a U.N. official, the notifications went out last week to the governments of Uganda, Sudan and the Democratic Republic...
The U.S. Senate has voted, by a 90-9 veto-proof margin, to establish uniform and clear interrogation policies for the interrogation of individuals detained in the war on terror. Apparently, the amendment (which would be attached to a spending bill) would require adherence to the Army's existing field manual for interrogation.I am obviously no expert in the effectiveness of interrogation methods...
I wouldn't usually take note of this commonplace account of an address to Canadian lawyers by Justice Shi Jiuyoung, the current President of ICJ, except for a couple of statements of interest.First, Justice Shi defended the ICJ from charges that it moves way too slowly on the grounds that the procedures and various jurisdictions involved in interstate disputes. Moreover, he...
My former colleague and friend Wadie Said has a rather different take on the recent Israeli Supreme Court decision refusing to follow the ICJ's advisory opinion on the legality of the "security fence" Israel has erected. My original post observed that the Israeli Supreme Court was quite deferential toward international law, but not the toward the ICJ's interpretation of international...
Costa Rica's government announced today that it will apply to the ICJ to resolve a decades-long dispute with Nicaragua over navigation rights on the parts of the San Juan River that run between the two countries (UPDATE: Press release announcing the case is here. It looks like the most important precedent for this case is an opinion by U.S....
I've been remiss in failing to keep up with the proceedings in Medellin v. Dretke, a case involving the enforceability of a judgment by the International Court of Justice that I blogged rather obsessively about here, here, and here. Luckily, Lyle Denniston of SCOTUSBlog is on the case here with a useful report on the latest proceedings, which have become...
I hadn't noticed until today this recent lawsuit by the Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports, a U.S. lumber industry lobbying group, challenging the constitutionality of one part of the North American Free Trade Agreement's Chapter 19 dispute resolution system. The complaint challenges a system of binational panels, appointed by the NAFTA secretariat and comprised of U.S., Canadian, and Mexican citizens,...
International lawyers have long lamented that it is nearly impossible to get courts to apply and enforce treaties, especially to assess damages against government officials. All of this is about to change. A federal appeals court has held that the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (VCCR) creates a private right of action. I believe this marks the first time...
Sometimes, the U.S. government seems at odds with all of its allies. The most recent example is the battle over the Convention for the Protection of the Diversity of Cultural Contents and Artistic Expressions sponsored by UNESCO, the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. U.S. Ambassador to UNESCO Louise Oliver criticizes the draft treaty, and UNESCO in general, for failing...
Peggy, Chris, and I are very pleased to announce that Professor Roger Alford of Pepperdine University will be joining Opinio Juris on a permanent basis. In addition to being a top-notch scholar, Roger was also a guest blogger here over the summer, contributing a number of fascinating posts from India. We are thrilled to have him as a permanent blogger.Welcome...
Professor Eric Posner has a typically provocative piece in the NYT arguing that some kind of political accommodation with the former Baathists in Iraq will have to be made before peace can come to Iraq. This means, as he notes, that while Saddam Hussein and his associates could be convicted of war crimes, the guilt cannot fall on every soldier...
The Cox International Center at Case Western is launching "Grotian Moment: The Saddam Trial Blog" which will bring together some of the leading scholars of international criminal law to comment on the upcoming trial of Saddam Hussein. Lots of international law bigwigs will be participating and they have already had quite a few interesting posts on topics such as the...
