In a landmark — and admirably progressive — decision, the Supreme Court of Mexico had held that dismissing HIV+ soldiers from the military is unconstitutional:In a case brought by 11 members of the military, the court declared unconstitutional a law requiring naval officers and soldiers with HIV/AIDS to leave the armed forces. Following the decision, Mexico's armed forces will have to...
Important and exciting ICC news to report: Japan's Cabinet has expressed its desire for Japan to join the ICC. Although the Diet has to pass the necessary legislation, no significant opposition is expected. The following is an excerpt from the Japan Federation of Bar Associations in favor of the move:The JFBA adopted the Resolution Calling for Japan's Proactive Involvement in...
According to the very slick site greatfirewallofchina.org, Opinio Juris can be read in China -- unlike Wikipedia, Amnesty International, the State Department's "democracy" page, the Economist, and Armani. We'll have to try harder. H/T: FP Passport. ...
The ICC's Special Working Group on the Crime of Aggression (SWG) met again last month in New York. According to the Financial Times, the SWG is close to achieving consensus on a definition of the crime:Sixty years after the Nuremberg trials made legal history by finding individuals responsible for the second world war, a select group of diplomats, lawyers...
The international law blogosphere is now less lonely — and more gender balanced. The new group blog IntLawGrrls currently has six members, five of whom use pseudonyms of famous women that, with the exception of Mata Hari, I've never heard of. (Which probably makes their point.) The contributors are: Diane Marie Amann (Davis);...
Canada is so close to the United States — yet sometimes it seems thousands of miles away politically. Exhibit 1: the Supreme Court of Canada has unanimously struck down a controversial security-certificate process used to detain terrorism suspects on the ground that the process violates the right to life, liberty, and security of the person:The security certificate process is...
A fascinating debate has been taking place this week concerning a post on Instapundit in which Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, advocated assassinating Iranian atomic scientists and "radical mullahs." Here is Reynold's original post: IRAN IN IRAQ: Smoking guns. This has been obvious for a long time anyway, and I don't understand why...
Honestly, it's things like this that explain why I sometimes fail to choose my words carefully when I'm criticizing the Bush Administration. From the Sparta Independent, courtesy of Americablog:To the Editor: I have a son going to Iraq this summer. I was able to afford to buy state-of-the-art body armor for his protection. Unfortunately there are many parents that are...
How much of a disaster is the Iraq War? If the editors of Foreign Policy are correct, a major one. Here, according to the magazine's most recent cover story, are the top 10 "winners" in Iraq: 1. Iran 2. Moqtada al-Sadr 3. Al-Qaeda 4. Samuel Huntington (for his "clash of civilizations" thesis) 5. China 6. Arab Dictators 7. The Price of Oil (and not from...
Because kiwis would never vote for a Prime Minister stupid enough to say something like this:Obama said Saturday at his campaign kickoff in Springfield, Ill., that one of the country's first priorities should be ending the war in Iraq. He has also introduced a bill in the Senate to prevent President Bush from increasing American troop levels in Iraq and...
The good news: The Bush Administration has finally brought criminal charges against Luis Posada Carriles — the Venezuelan terrorist and former CIA asset who blew up a Cuban commercial flight in 1976, killing 73 innocent people — narrowly avoiding a federal judge's February 1 deadline to prosecute or release him. The bad news: The Bush Administration has charged Posada with making...
Excellent news: Morocco is set to become the first Arab country to formally abolish the death penalty:Morocco will become by the end of April the first Arab state to remove the death penalty from its statute books, the president of the state appointed Consultative Committee on Human Rights, Ben Dhikri, confirmed to Adnkronos International (AKI) on Thursday. He is among...
