"Chucky" Taylor, son of former Liberian President (and current war crimes defendant) Charles Taylor, was convicted Friday in Florida federal court of committing torture when he was with his father in Liberia. What makes Taylor's conviction news (although only news overseas, apparently, since it didn't make any of the leading U.S. newspapers) is that it is the first conviction under the...
It's a little late in the Bush administration to be creating new foreign policy doctrines, but the NYT suggests that U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates did just that in his speech yesterday at the Carnegie Endowment. According to the NYT, this is the key sentence is the most expansive articulation yet of the nuclear deterrence policy: Today we also make clear...
Sure, some kind of important event will happen on November 4th involving the coronation of some guy named Barack, but international economic law geeks will have their eyes focused on a different date: November 15th. On that day, G-20 industrial leaders will gather at the National Building Museum in Washington D.C. to try to come up with a global response to the global financial...
So asks Robert Dreyfuss of The Nation, in his interesting piece about the recent U.S. cross-border raids into Pakistan and Syria, with Iran looming (see this NYT article for background). Dreyfuss is very worried about this doctrine, and suggests that its acceptance could result in the "end of international law." I wouldn't go that far, but it is definitely a challenge to traditional norms...
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Community Court of Justice has found that the West African state of Niger has violated its obligations to protect its citizens for slavery. Specifically, Niger failed to prevent Hadijatou Mani, who was sold into slavery at the age of 12 in 1996 for about £300 and regularly beaten and sexually abused. The Court...
The oft-discussed relationship of the United States and International Law will be the theme of this year's International Law Weekend of the American Branch of the International Law Association. The conference will be held October 16-18, 2008, at the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, 42 West 44th Street, New York City. The kick-off panel will focus...
Franck Fife/AFP via MSNBC As we've learned from our expert guest-bloggers, there are disputes arising out of the Olympics, and then there are DISPUTES. The reported International Olympic Committee investigation into the age of Chinese gymnast and gold medalist He Kexin （何可欣） qualifies as the type of DISPUTE that could really get ugly. Why? Because a big part of the investigation...
Almost buried amid the last-minute flurry of litigation over Medellin's pending execution tonight at 7 p.m. EDT, Texas has made a potentially important but ambiguous concession to the ICJ. It has agreed to support federal habeas petitions in the future for Mexican citizens arguing that a failure of consular notification had caused prejudice to their criminal conviction and death sentence....
Executive invocations of foreign affairs as the basis for dismissing otherwise valid litigation doesn't seem to work very well these days. But there is one area where (thus far) courts have continued to give the U.S. executive essentially complete deference: determinations on immunity for heads of state. And so it is today in the Federal District Court of D.C.'s decision...
Like our readers, I am enjoying the terrific and sophisticated discussion on Ben Wittes' important and highly persuasive book (My short reaction: He's pretty much right about most things). I hate to interrupt this flow with non-Wittes stuff, but I couldn't resist a brief note on the growing non-U.S.-related backlash against the ICC. Indeed, just as the U.S. seems to...
Thailand and Cambodia have both mobilized troops to defend their claims to sovereignty over the Preah Vihear Temple, which is located on their border. The dispute has lingered for decades and was supposedly dealt with by this 1962 ICJ decision which awarded sovereignty to Cambodia. Apparently, Thailand is still not convinced and is prepared to occupy the temple by force (it is only...
I don't know how seriously to take Prof. Francis Boyle, who is literally dying to file an application in the ICJ on behalf of Iran against Israel and the U.S. Still, this interview in the Iran English language news site suggests something might happen soon. And Iran might get a sympathetic hearing at the ICJ. And it would raise...
