Longtime readers may recall my previous obsession with the seemingly endless Lumber Wars between Canada and the U.S. over Canadian timber subsidies and U.S. tariffs punishing such subsidies. The dispute threatened NAFTA, or at least Chapter 19 of NAFTA, because of the U.S. lumber industry's lawsuit to declare that chapter unconstitutional. Now it turns out that the deal to end...
In a curious strategic move, the ICC is threatening to issue more arrest warrants against Sudanese government officials in order to get their original arrest warrants enforced. Luis Moreno Ocampo told Reuters in an interview he planned to present evidence against new suspects to ICC judges before the end of the year if Khartoum does not hand over two suspects...
Has the U.S. government shifted its position on the ICC? I can't really tell if the following report of a speech by U.S. State Department Legal Adviser (and sometime-Opinio Juris guest blogger) John Bellinger represents a real shift in policy. "The U.S. must acknowledge that the ICC enjoys a large body of international support, and that many countries will...
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has taken the first crack at applying the Supreme Court's recent decision in Medellin with respect to self-executing treaties. In Mora v. People of New York, the Second Circuit rejected a foreign national's effort to win damages for violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. Interestingly, the Second...
The long-awaited peace deal in Uganda may finally get done, according to this NYT report. But the ICC problem is not going away, since Kony is saying he will sign, but not implement the deal unless his arrest warrant is lifted. And although the ICC is talking tough, it is also showing signs they are preparing for a...
I got a chance last night (in my ASIL Conference hotel room) to catch an episode of HBO's Miniseries "John Adams" (Episode 5, "Unite or Die") and it is as good as advertised. Sure, the characters look a bit silly in their costumes, but the acting is good enough to make these historical figure seem real. And there...
As this essay in the invaluable Institute for War and Peace Studies argues, a debate over the final location of the ICTY's documentary archives is missing the point. The archive of the ICTY is a vast and invaluable collection, and its holdings will be indispensible for anyone researching or investigating events of the 1990s, in any former Yugoslav republic. But most...
Russia's lower house of Parliament has passed a resolution denying that the Soviet Union committed "genocide" in Ukraine during the 1930s. The resolution states: "There is no historical proof that the famine was organized along ethnic lines. Its victims were million of citizens of the Soviet Union, representing different peoples and nationalities living largely in agricultural areas of the...
The ICTY has acquitted Ramush Haradinaj, a former commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and a former Kosovo prime minister, of committing war crimes during the 1998-99 Kosovo conflict with Serbia. (Official press release is here). In giving its judgment, the ICTY Chamber went out of its way to complain about how many witnesses for the prosecution were...
Pardon me for missing this little news item, but the ICJ has another new case: Ecuador has applied to the ICJ over Colombia's alleged spraying of toxic herbicides over Ecuadorian territory. Here is what Ecuador is seeking the ICJ to declare: (a) Colombia has violated its obligations under international law by causing or allowing the deposit on the territory of...
This op-ed by a former ICTY and ICTR prosecutor argues that the ICC should move, at least some of their hearings and trials, to locations closer to the site of the alleged crimes. In the case of the ICC, this means spending some of the $600 million it has spent so far on facilities in Africa, where all of...
I wanted to jump in with a quick response to Marty's awesome post about what is, without question, the most surprising (and for me, delightful) part of the Medellin opinion: Justice Stevens' concurrence. I love this concurrence, especially because I am (to put it mildly) rarely fond of Justice Stevens' forays into foreign relations law. This is, after...
