Today, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a long-running dispute between the City of New York and the governments of India and Mongolia over their tax liability for real property used for their permanent missions to the United Nations. A transcript of oral argument is here. (See SCOTUSBlog's very useful summary here and other links to...
The ICTR has apparently refused to open an investigation into allegations that the current Rwandan President Paul Kagame was complicit in the 1994 assassination credited with setting off the Rwandan genocide of that year. The allegation of Kagame's complicity in that 1994 assassination was made by a French judge and have so enraged the Rwandan government that it is...
The Chief Prosecutor for the ICTY is defending herself from charges by her former deputy that she improperly agreed to conceal information that could have exposed Serb responsibility for the Bosnian genocide, according to this IWPR report. According to Carla Del Ponte's spokeperson, "the suggestion that there was a deal to conceal evidence is completely false." The mini-tempest was raised by...
Professor Eric Posner's op-ed in the Saturday WSJ($) (free version now available here) offers a typically unsentimental, hard-eyed assessment of the value of international human rights law. That value, according to Posner, appears to be zero. Here is brief excerpt,(Continue Reading) Today, the future of the international human rights legal regime is bleak. And yet if what matters is not...
How did I miss this? Yesterday, Rwanda filed an application against France in the International Court of Justice seeking a declaration that certain French arrest warrants against Rwandan government officials violate international law (only the press release announcing the application, but not the application itself is online. While you are reading the press release, check out the spiffy new...
I've slammed Amnesty International in the past for their seemingly one-sided criticism of U.S. and Israeli forces, so I should note in all fairness that Amnesty International has a new report out alleging that the Taleban forces in Afghanistan are engaging in intentional and repeated violations of the law of war. The BBC summary is here. The Taleban have...
Let me beat Roger to the punch on this one. Where are the international and foreign law precedents in today's landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding a federal law banning the so-called "partial birth abortion" procedure? As far as I can tell, today's opinion is free of any such references. This is surprising because the right to choose...
Remember those "missing" documents that the ICJ never considered in its judgment finding Serbia not liable for the Bosnian genocide? In another twist, Croatian media is reporting that the documents were withheld and redacted as part of a "deal" between the Chief Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, Carla Del Ponte, and the Serbian...
The WSJ editorial page has a predictable but still quite powerful defense of Paul Wolfowitz today based on the documents recently released about his case. The upshot: Wolfowitz is the target of a smear campaign aided and abetted by media organs like the NYT. (UPDATE: Prof. Ruth Wedgwood has a similarly outraged defense of Wolfowitz in the LA Times...
This past week, the editors of the Texas International Law Journal hosted a conference on the always controversial Military Commissions Act of 2006. The conference was a bit predictable in that it was full of law professors and advocates criticizing the MCA. But at least their criticisms were knowledgeable and interesting. (Links to webcasts of the conference, which...
In a strange turnabout, Yemen's Parliament has voted to retract its previous March 24 vote approving the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Reports are sketchy as to why exactly the Parliament has reversed itself so dramatically. So maybe we should wait a few more days and see if the Parliament reverses itself again. ...
A war of words between the newbie presidents of Chile and Peru may send a long-running territorial dispute between those two countries to the International Court of Justice, according to this report. Chilean president Michelle Bachelet remarked on TV that “[i]f Peru decides to go to the international justice courts, then that’s up to them”, Garcia responded just a...
