Today, the Supreme Court finally hears oral argument in the Medellin case. I don’t have much more to add than what SCOTUSBlog has reported here, but it strikes me that Texas is again in a very difficult position, mostly because of their own high-risk litigation strategy and also because of Medellin’s clever and effective approach.By filing a motion to stay...
Readers of my skeptical blog posts on internationalism (here and here) might be surprised and amused that I spent the past week in the heart of Old Europe at a classically internationalist confab: the Willem C. Vis International Arbitration Moot Competition. The Vis Moot draws students and lawyers from 47 different countries to Vienna to participate in arbitration...
This and other reports indicate that the oil industry is jumping on board the Law of the Sea Treaty bandwagon, setting up a battle between two key Republican constituencies: the energy industry and conservative intellectuals. According to this report, oil development companies will not invest in risky undersea oil exploration efforts until property rights over such ventures are settled....
As I sip my half pint of Weiznenbier "Edelweiss" here at Cafe Leopold in Vienna, I thought I would blog a few short posts using the cafe's free WLAN:Representatives from North Uganda visited the Hague last week to ask the ICC to hold off on arrest warrants for leaders of the Lords’ Resistance Army. As I have noted before, the...
Various blogpundits are warning that China’s new anti secession law is just a prelude to a pending invasion of Taiwan. As a descendant of a Taiwanese mother and Chinese father, with friends and relatives on both sides of the Taiwan Straits, I’ve been worried about such a conflict breaking out for years. On the other hand, since people have been...
I will be accompanying Hofstra's team to Vienna over the next week to compete in the Willem de Vis International Moot Arbitration Competition. This competition is actually a remarkable competition that draws 140 plus teams from around the world. My blogging will therefore be light or perhaps non-existent during that time, but I may break in periodically with dispatches from...
Two South Korean protesters, one an elderly woman, cut off their fingers in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul to protest Japan's claim to an obscure rocky uninhabited island off the Korean and Japanese coasts.In fact, there is a bit more at stake in the territorial dispute than it seems because, apparently, control of the uninhabited rocks will also...
Reuters reports that Nigeria is proposing an African court to try war crimes arising out of the Darfur crisis in Sudan. This may break the continuing deadlock (which I first discussed here)between the EU and the U.S. over whether the Security Council should refer Darfur to the ICC. Nigeria's proposal is exactly what the U.S. has been looking for. Whether...
The ICC held its first hearing yesterday, a status conference, on the investigation by its prosecutors of crimes committed in Democratic Republic of Congo. "It is the first time the International Criminal Court, which began work almost three years ago, is formally studying a specific war crimes investigation." Interestingly, the ICC's current docket consists exclusively of African investigations: Ivory Coast,...
The Washington Post weighs in today with a surprisingly sensible editorial applauding President Bush's decision to withdraw from the Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (which I discussed here). Were the Optional Protocol a useful instrument in protecting Americans abroad, it might make sense to tolerate the international court's presumptuousness. But the protocol doesn't help much. Most...
Reports indicate the President is planning to submit DR-CAFTA to Congress in the next few weeks. This will trigger the 90 day clock for approval. This report suggests the President is still 20 votes short in the House. Get ready for a trade fight!...
Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSBlog usefully analyzes Texas's latest salvo in the ongoing battle over what to do with the Medellin case in the Supreme Court now that the President has sided with Medellin. Somewhat to my surprise, Texas is opposing Medellin's motion for a stay pending its state court litigation (which was prompted by the President's executive determination discussed here)....
