This has the look of a very ugly situation developing down south. President Hugo Chávez yesterday placed Venezuela on a war footing, sending thousands of troops and tanks to the border with Colombia after its neighbour killed a top rebel leader inside Ecuadorean territory. “Mr. Defense Minister, move me 10 battalions to the border with Colombia immediately - tank battalions,”...
Kosovo's declaration of independence raised a host of interesting international legal questions that Chris, among others, explored in some very good posts and discussions. And it looks like the ICJ may get a chance to opine on this question as well. Serbia will soon take Kosovo's "illegal" declaration of independence to the International Court of Justice, Foreign Minister Vuk...
During the most recent U.S. presidential debate, candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton competed over who was against U.S. participation in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and who was REALLY against NAFTA. Interestingly, both candidates essentially pledged to, if elected, threaten to withdraw from NAFTA in order to force Canada and Mexico to renegotiate. As a policy...
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has affirmed a lower court opinion dismissing a lawsuit brought seeking damages for the U.S. military's use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War (Vietnam Ass'n for Victims of Agent Orange v. Dow Chemical Co). For me, the most interesting and doctrinally significant part of the decision is the Second...
During my latest blog-blackout, I missed the latest from Uganda. Apparently, the LRA-Uganda peace talks have reached agreement on a domestic process for prosecuting war crimes. The Ugandan government and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels on Tuesday signed a major agreement on how to deal with crimes committed during the brutal nearly 22-year insurgency in northern Uganda. The...
I am not really sure, but the erosion of the U.N. system and international law is something that is part of every Serbian and Russian government spokesman on this issue. And there is certainly some plausibility to this argument, as I understand it. U.N. member states are supposed to recognize the territorial sovereignty of other member states. (See,...
I've mentioned in the past various pipe dreams of a US-Canada North American Union, or perhaps just a selective annexation of oil-rich Canadian provinces. Well, former French PM Balladur has gone one step further, proposing a "Union of the West" between the U.S. and Western Europe. Actually, it is not so much a Union as something closer to the old...
I notice that none of us have posted on the Israeli military assault on Gaza. This is not surprising, there is very little useful to say about it, especially from a legal point of view. There is something depressingly predictable about the commentary arising out of Israel's military incursion into Gaza. Critics of Israeli policy in general have denounced the incursion, alleging...
Or something like that. More precisely, Iran's government is peeved at continuing findings from an Argentine court holding the Iranian government responsible for the 1992 bombing of a Jewish in Buenos Aires and is threatening ICJ litigation. Prosecutor General Qorbanali Dorri Najafabadi on Monday stressed that Iran will lodge complaint with international court against Argentine government over repetition of unfounded allegation...
According to the UK's Herald: US special forces snatch squads are on standby to seize or disable Pakistan's nuclear arsenal in the event of a collapse of government authority or the outbreak of civil war following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. The troops, augmented by volunteer scientists from America's Nuclear Emergency Search Team organisation, are under orders to take control of an...
This month, Kosovo is planning to declare independence with the support of the EU and the United States. Russia and Serbia are dead-set opposed and Russia in particular is making all sorts of ugly noises about any potential Security Council resolutions on this topic. Serbia is also getting ready to try to block independence, although it seems like they...
The U.S. Supreme Court seems to want to answer that question, or at least some aspects of that question, by agreeing to hear two petitions from U.S. citizen detainees being held in Iraq by multinational forces. The consolidated cases arise from two lower court appellate decisions, both from the D.C. Circuit: MUNAF V. GEREN, SEC. OF ARMY and GEREN,...
