In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Author: Julian Ku

29 Apr

Why should an otherwise boring Supreme Court opinion Tuesday in Pasquantino v. U.S. on the applicability of federal "wire fraud" statute to activities involving avoidance of foreign tax laws (via SCOTUSBlog) affect our understanding of the President's foreign relations powers?Because Justice Thomas' opinion for the Court casually cites the legendary United States v. Curtiss-Wright case for the proposition that the...

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28 Apr

The WTO Appellate Body confirmed a lower panel ruling that the EU's system of subsidies for sugar producers violates WTO rules. The U.S. sugar subsidy system was similarly found in violation by a separate lower panel and this ruling suggests the U.S. will lose its appeal as well. Although it is unclear whether reducing the cost of say,...

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28 Apr

Euan Macdonald of the Transatlantic Assembly has a much more detailed discussion of the Goldsmith memo discussed below. He usefully notes that (1) Goldsmith plainly rejects the U.S. doctrine of preemptive self-defense, at least as articulated by the Bush Administration; and (2) the Goldsmith opinion supports Blair's claim that he did have legal advice assuring him that the Iraq...

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27 Apr

This interview with a local Ugandan NGO suggests the ICC should back out of its Ugandan investigation (an issue Peggy discussed in more detail here). Here's a key exchange between a reporter from the East African and David Kaiza:Does the ICC risk escalating the [Ugandan] war?The LRA [the Ugandan rebel forces -ed.] are not the kind of people who will...

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26 Apr

After bashing the ICJ a bit here, I thought it is only fair that I pass along ways that the ICJ can serve a useful though limited role in the settlement of international disputes.First, Malaysia and Indonesia, last seen sending out naval ships to confront each other over disputed islands, appear willing to consider sending this dispute as well to...

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25 Apr

According to the always reliable SCOTUSBlog, the Supreme Court denied certiorari today in Acree v. Iraq, a petition brought by U.S. POWs who had won a judgment against the Government of Iraq for mistreatment during the Gulf War. I blogged about this case, and Prof. John Norton Moore's vehement appeal for Supreme Court cert, here....

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25 Apr

According to this (admittedly right-wing) opinion piece, Nicole Kidman's latest movie "The Interpreter" is a piece of shameless pro-UN, pro-ICC propaganda. Now that seems perfectly all right to me, as long as it's a good movie. After all, movies like "Top Gun" and "Behind Enemy Lines" are basically advertisements for the U.S. Navy, so why can't the U.N. give...

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23 Apr

Although the U.S. has signed the Law of the Sea Treaty, the U.S. Senate has not yet ratified it and substantial conservative opposition to the treaty continues to loom (as I noted here). Interestingly, the Bush Administration is seeking congressional appropriations for the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and the Seabed Disputes Chamber of that Tribunal,...

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22 Apr

While we are thinking about U.N. reform, maybe we should think about reforming or even gutting the U.N.'s chief judicial organ: the International Court of Justice.The ICJ announced this week that it has undertaken certain re-shuffling of its chambers. This appears to be pretty minor stuff (I never even knew they had a chamber for "summary procedure"), but it does...

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22 Apr

In a little noticed vote, the U.S. defeated a resolution (8-22) that would have required the U.N. Human Rights Commission to request the U.S. government establish and impartial and independent fact-finding investigation into the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay (an account of the vote can be found here at the bottom of the release). China, Cuba, Sudan, and Zimbabwe...

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21 Apr

Committee II of the Eleventh United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice held a workshop yesterday to review the international anti-terrorist legal framework. As I've discussed here and here, this is a surprisingly underdeveloped area of international law given the fairly widespread consensus on the subject among most states....

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