I had contemplated weighing in on commentators' unfortunate tendency to equate the Responsibility to Protect doctrine with humanitarian invasion, but John Boonstra at UN Dispatch beat me to it. Here's a snippet:First, by and large, the R2P doctrine has been misunderstood or misrepresented in calls to "invade" Burma. R2P is often implied to boil down to a simple equation:...
I have blogged from time to time about the trial of Alberto Fujimori, the former President of Peru. Interested readers now have a new — and far better — source of information about the trial: Fujimori on Trial, a new bilingual Spanish/English blog sponsored by the Praxis Institute for Social Justice. Here is the blog's self-description:Praxis Institute for...
Oxford University Press has just published my friend Nils Melzer's book Targeted Killing in International Law. Here is the description from the Oxford website:A comprehensive analysis into the lawfulness of state-sponsored targeted killings under international human rights and humanitarian law, this book examines treaties, custom and general principles of law to determine the normative paradigms which govern the intentional...
I'm sorry, I just can't let this one go:Picture, if you will, a tree-lined plaza in Baghdad's International Village, flanked by fashion boutiques, swanky cafes, and shiny glass office towers. Nearby a golf course nestles agreeably, where a chip over the water to the final green is but a prelude to cocktails in the club house and a soothing massage...
Stories like this cause barely a ripple of controversy:Girls may be given free access to the emergency contraceptive pill at their local Auckland pharmacies in a bid to reduce teen pregnancies and abortions. The medicine can already be sold by many pharmacists without a doctor's prescription, including to girls without parental consent. An Auckland District Health Board committee will tomorrow consider a...
How desperate is the ICTR to fulfill its completion strategy by dumping cases on Rwanda? Enough to disavow the NGO on which it has relied on for nearly 14 years:The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) when presenting last week his motion in favour of transfer of genocide accused Yusuf Munyakazi to Rwanda, clearly distanced himself...
Marty Lederman has kindly published a long post I have written on what — if anything — the Justice Case has to say about the criminal responsibility of government lawyers like Yoo. Here is the introduction:Scholars who argue that John Yoo’s authorship of the infamous torture memos makes him complicit in various war crimes -– torture, illegal detention, etc....
As a brief follow-up to Sonya's post, it's worth noting that the IHT began trying Tariq Aziz, Saddam's deputy prime minister and the highest ranking Christian in Saddam's regime, earlier this week:Iraq's former deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, was known as the 'Ace of Spades' in the United States' deck of playing cards of Iraq's most wanted. But he was better-known...
The following article was written by Sonya Sceats, Associate Fellow in International Law at Chatham House in London. It first appeared in The World Today, Chatham House's journal. I am reprinting it here for our readers who are interested in the more recent activities of the Iraqi High Tribunal. Rowdy sessions of the Iraq High Tribunal attracted sensational daily...
Via Crooked Timber, I learned today that Charles Tilly, one of the great political and historical sociologists of his time, has died. The news makes me very sad, because Chuck was one of the most important academic influences in my life: I took every class he offered, from "Introduction to Political Sociology" to a three-person independent study on social...
The very first post I wrote for Opinio Juris -- more than two years ago, when I was guest-blogging -- was about the inequality of arms that exists between the prosecution and defense at the international tribunals. I recall spending hours on the post, mustering facts, honing my arguments, polishing my prose. I was proud of my first...
Since being unanimously acquitted by the ICTR Appeals Chamber in 2006, Andre Ntagerura has lived as a virtual prisoner in a UN safehouse in Arusha, unable to find a country that will take him. Last November, he filed a motion asking the ICTR to order Canada, his first choice, to grant him asylum. On Wednesday, the Court decided...
