The General Assembly and Security Council approved the selection of Ronny Abraham to become a member of the International Court of Justice today. M. Abraham replaces Justice and former President of the Court Gilbert Guillaume, who resigned last Friday, and will serve out the rest of Guilliame's term, which expires in 2009. M. Abraham, a widely-respected French international lawyer, takes...
As you can see, we have been having some technical difficulties. We hope to be back in business as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience....
Gregg Easterbrook, no patsy for the Bush Administration, has a terrific column in this week's New Republic Online ($) pointing out that amid all the hoopla tomorrow over the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol, the Bush EPA has quietly stitched together an international plan to reduce potential global warming gases in roughly the same amounts as Kyoto. According...
While the NYT and Samantha Power have been fretting about the U.S. opposition to an ICC referral for Sudan, the U.S. (apparently listening to the wise counsel of Peggy and/or Hillary Clinton) has moved ahead with a draft Security Council Resolution calling for a 10,000-man peacekeeping force for Sudan as well as various other measures. This will not solve everything...
Japan announced today that it would allow fishing expeditions to Okinotorishima, an obscure island 1000 miles southeast of Japan. For Law of the Sea aficionados, this sets up a pending battle over the size of Japan's "exclusive economic zone" because if Okinotorishima is merely some "rocks" (as China says), Japan's EEZ is substantially smaller than it currently claims. Countries have...
As further reports of UN peacekeeper atrocities continue to flow out of the D.R. Congo, an interesting legal puzzle arises: Can those peacekeepers be prosecuted for war crimes by the ICC? The answer is probably yes, no thanks to the U.S., which has been introducing annual resolutions in the Security Council granting immunity to UN peacekeepers since 2002, but which...
As the ICC gears up to issue its first arrest warrants against rebel leaders in Uganda, church leaders there are warning that the warrants could upset already fraying peace negotiations. I don't know anything about the Ugandan situation except that the Ugandan government was the one that referred the case to the ICC, has been trying to withdraw the...
The NAFTA Secretariat posted this decision on Friday remanding to the U.S. Department of Commerce a decision by Commerce to impose anti-dumping penalties on Oil Country Tubular Goods from Mexico. This decision is authorized by Chapter 19 of NAFTA, which authorizes the formation of Binational Arbitration Panels to review antidumping determinations made by domestic authorities (in this case, the U.S....
I should first thank Prof. Heller for adding his insightful comments to our blog. I hope to return the favor at his blog-home at the Yin Blog. Both he and Peggy have useful comments, although I think both are reading much more into my post than I myself intended (but I suppose that is my own fault)....
Today's Los Angeles Times contains a predictable op-ed condemning the U.S. for failing to join the Kyoto treaty to reduce global warming, which will go into effect next Wednesday. In addition to attacking Bush, the Republicans, and Michael Crichton for being the stooges of the energy industry, the writer throws in this line, which is fast congealing into...
From the department of obscure court decisions, the ICJ ruled today that it has no jurisdiction over a dispute between Liechtenstein and Germany over decisions of Germany, in and after 1998, to treat certain property of Liechtenstein nationals as German assets having been ‘seized for the purposes of reparation or restitution, or as a result of the state of war’ -...
Common sense triumphed today when Germany announced it would not investigate allegations that Donald Rumsfeld committed war crimes. The NY-based Center for Constitutional Rights had filed a petition asking Germany to investigate on the theory that the U.S. authorities were incapable of investigating such claims due to a "continuing scheme of corruption". This remarkable (and dare I say it, wild)...
