In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Author: Kevin Jon Heller

04 Dec

Steve Clemons of The Washington Note has a number of interesting thoughts on the winners, losers, and implications of Bolton's resignation:1. John Bolton's resignation reflects a loss of ground by Jesse Helms' inspired 'pugnacious nationalists'. It is also a clear loss for Vice President Cheney and his loyal followers. Jim Lobe captures this quite well in a piece he has...

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03 Dec

Augusto Pinochet has received last rights following a heart attack. Although still alive, he appears to be in imminent danger of death. If he dies, it will bring one of the darkest chapters in Chilean history to an unsatisfying end; as I have noted before, courts have only recently begun to strip Pinochet of the general immunity he...

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27 Nov

It's been a difficult week for the new Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), which is supposed to begin work in early 2007. First, an important meeting of the ECCC's Cambodian and international judges failed to reach agreement on the Tribunal's rules, which govern every aspect of its administration, including investigation procedures, trial motions, and appeals. ...

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23 Nov

If true, this is fantastic news:Strong hints have emerged that the Vatican is preparing to change its policy on the use of condoms in the fight against Aids, after a 200-page study on the question, commissioned by the Pope, was passed to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for consideration. "This is something that worries the Pope a lot,"...

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20 Nov

I noted a couple of weeks ago that the Iraqi High Tribunal's failure to release the written verdict at the same time that it announced Saddam's conviction was strong evidence that, despite my earlier skepticism, the announcement was timed to influence the U.S. elections. Well, the written verdict still has not been publicly released — making the inference of...

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20 Nov

The logical conclusion of Chertoff, Gonzales, et al.'s reactionary hostility to international law?This is where we've arrived in this country: You have the constitutional right to burn an American flag, but you can get into trouble for simply flying a foreign one. At least you can in the 30,000-person town of Pahrump, Nevada, which is close to Las Vegas and even...

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16 Nov

Germanwatch and the Climate Action Network-Europe (CANE) have released their 2007 Climate Change Performance Index. Their press release describes the purpose and methodology of the index as follows:Jan Burck and other Germanwatch experts developed the CCPI methodology, which is meant to help increase transparency in international climate policy. The Index compares the climate protection efforts of 56 industrialised and...

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16 Nov

The moment of truth for Luis Posada Carriles is approaching: U.S. District Judge Philip Martinez held last Friday that the Bush administration has until February 1, 2007, to either prosecute or release Posada. Prosecution is looking increasingly unlikely: although the administration urged the judge in October to keep Posada in detention, it has consistently refused to bring criminal charges...

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15 Nov

A number of commentators have noticed that the new season of Battlestar Galactica, the best show on television, is a thinly disguised attack on the Bush administration's policies in the War on Terror. Here, for example, is a snippet from an essay in Slate entitled, appropriately enough, "Does Battlestar Galactica Support the Iraqi Insurgency?": It starts with a suicide...

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