In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Author: Julian Ku

10 Oct

Jose Medellin, the Mexican national facing a death sentence in Texas, is getting his second day at the U.S. Supreme Court today. Medellin is seeking to suspend his execution due to U.S. violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations in his arrest and subsequent conviction and the International Court of Justice's interpretatin of those obligations. Medellin's earlier petition...

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09 Oct

The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to review an appeal brought by Khaled el-Masri, a German national who alleged that he was kidnapped by CIA agents in Europe and held in an Afghan prison. El-Masri's lawsuit was dismissed, not on the merits, but on the "state secrets privilege" ground. This is not totally surprising, but it suggests that...

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08 Oct

Early reports suggest that Costa Rican voters have narrowly approved Costa Rica's accession to the Central American Free Trade Agreement. Costa Rica is the only party to CAFTA that has submitted the agreement to a referendum. Such up or down votes on free trade deals rarely occur through the referendum process. Indeed, treaties and other international agreements almost never...

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04 Oct

The NYT is running a very long expose on secret legal opinions by the Office of Legal Counsel endorsing many harsh interrogation techniques that many had believed were prohibited by prior OLC opinions and the McCain Amendment to the Detainee Treatment Act. The article paints the current OLC Chief, Steven Bradbury, as a shill for the Bush Administration by...

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04 Oct

The U.S. State Department is really getting into this blog thing. This week, they launched their first official blog "Dipnote." (Apparently, this is short for "diplomatic note" in diplomatese). According to its first post, the State Department is "hoping to start a dialogue with the public. More than ever, world events affect our daily lives--what we see and hear, what...

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02 Oct

Good news so far from the never-ending softwood lumber dispute between Canada and the U.S. Things are moving along very quickly. As Roger has noted, the U.S. and Canada decided to send all future disputes about softwood lumber to the London Court of International Arbitration, a group that normally hears disputes between private parties only. What is weird is...

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01 Oct

I didn't notice this until just now, but U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs Kristen Silverberg set up a sort of mini-blog reviewing her activities at the U.N. General Assembly meetings in New York last week. It is actually a good idea (and Silverberg cuts a far more appealing figure than one of her predecessors, John...

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25 Sep

U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney has joined a growing public movement to "indict" Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for incitement to commit genocide against Israelis. In his letter to the U.N. Secretary General from last week (and developed more here), Romney writes, If President Ahmadinejad sets foot in the United States, he should be handed an indictment under the Genocide Convention....

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