Mark your calendars! News reports out of the Balkans suggest that the International Court of Justice will release its long-awaited ruling in Bosnia's application against Serbia on February 26, 2007. Bosnia has alleged that Serbia committed genocide during the Balkan wars of the 1990s and the ICJ held extensive hearings on the case last May. No confirmation...
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit yesterday upheld a lower court order barring U.S. forces in Iraq from transferring a U.S.-citizen enemy combatant to Iraqi custody. The case, Omar v. Harvey, is a potentially important one because it indicates that U.S. federal courts will continue to maintain habeas corpus jurisdiction, even where petitioners are held by...
U.S. Congressman Adam Schiff of California introduced a resolution last week called the "Affirmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution." It calls upon President Bush to "to ensure that the foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide documented in the United...
President Chirac of France announced yesterday that France and 46 nations will begin deliberations to replace the United Nations Environmental Programme with a more powerful world environmental body. Coming on the heels of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's recent report on climate change, Chirac called for "the transformation of the UNEP into a genuine international organisation to which...
I have been travelling the last few days, so I missed this strange and potentially disturbing story from the UK's Guardian newspaper. The former president of the European Court of Human Rights, Luzius Wildhaber, alleges that during a three-day visit to Russia last October he was poisoned. This poisoning, he alleges, occurred about the same time as the...
Pardon the U.S. football analogy, but this report from about the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda's scramble to finish trying its caseload before its 2008 deadline does have the feel of a team rushing to catch up before the clock runs out. The ICTR's main strategy for beating the clock is the transfer of many of its detainees to...
This shouldn't be news, but it might be worth noting that the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution today condemning denials of the Holocaust and calling such denials "tantamount to approval of genocide in all its forms." The resolution was adopted by consensus, which actually is kind of silly because one of the goals of the resolution is to...
To no one's surprise, the International Criminal Court's Pre-Trial Chamber has referred its very first case, The Prosecutor v. Thomas Lubanga Dyilo Situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to trial. Lubanga Dyilo has been charged with recruiting child soldiers to commit atrocities in a civil conflict within the Democratic Republic of Congo from 2002 to 2003 (see...
During my recent blog-vacation, I didn't notice that the U.S. Supreme Court has granted certiorari last week in a neat little case involving the Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations v. the City of New York. The dispute is whether New York City's suit to to recover unpaid property taxes imposed on property owned by the Government of...
[NOTE to Opinio Juris Readers: Although we will continue to host John Bellinger as a guest blogger today, I thought I'd resume normal programming and start posting on other topics. But please stick around for future posts by John as well.] The International Court of Justice will issue its decision today (around 10 a.m. Hague time, GMT +1, which is about...
This exchange between John Bellinger and our terrific group of guests and commenters has been so fascinating that I hesitate to intervene. But the last few posts have moved me to pose a fundamental domestic U.S. law question to John and our readers. Who has the authority to interpret or re-interpret the laws of war on behalf of...
The NYT Arts section reports that the Tricycle Theater in London will run a play from April 19-May 19 entitled, "Called to Account: The Indictment of Anthony Charles Lynton Blair for the Crime of Aggression Against Iraq — A Hearing". The "play" will be dramatized based on real closed door cross-examinations of 20 international experts by two British...
