As a dedicated fan of NFL football, I always thought rugby was a silly game. For the record: I was wrong. The denizens of my newly-adopted country are rugby mad, and having watched two tests between New Zealand's All Blacks -- the world's best rugby team -- and Ireland, I now understand why. It's an amazing game,...
The ICC's Special Working Group on the Crime of Aggression has released an annotated agenda of its intersessional meeting last week at Princeton. The meeting addressed four interrelated issues: [1] The relationship between the crime of aggression and Article 25(3) of the Rome Statute, which establishes the possible forms of participation in a crime. Two different approaches have...
The Cambodian government has announced that the judges of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal will be sworn in on July 3, with prosecutors to begin "the formal launching of judicial work" on July 10. Trials are expected to begin in 2007. Cambodia and the UN agreed in 2003 to set up a hybrid tribunal to prosecute surviving Khmer Rouge leaders for...
I'm back, now blogging from the southern hemisphere. It's winter in Auckland — which means it's in the mid-60s. Because it's at the northern end of New Zealand, Auckland has a remarkably temperate climate, with temperatures rarely climbing higher than 85 or lower than 45. (I don't know if we have any readers in New Zealand, but...
A district court in the Hague has sentenced Gus Kouwenhoven to eight years in prison for smuggling weapons for Charles Taylor in violation of a UN arms embargo. In their ruling on Wednesday, the judges said Mr. Kouwenhoven's assistance to Mr. Taylor was "crucial," and suggested his motivations were not political, but rather "guided purely by financial interests." ...
We have a new guest-blogger starting today — Adil Haque, a recent graduate of Yale Law School who is currently clerking for Judge Newman on the Second Circuit. Adil's expertise ranges from criminal law theory to international criminal law to Islamic law, and he has already amassed a publication record any new assistant professor would envy. His latest...
If anyone out there still believes that Iraq "reconstruction" is about something other than enriching the Republican party's corporate cronies, read this post, which explains how the White House and the Republican majority are making sure that new funds cannot be audited by the Special Inspector General for Iraqi Reconstruction, who had committed the most mortal of all sins in...
The Rwandan government has asked Emmanuel Bagambiki, the former Prefect of Cyangugu, to turn himself in to Rwandan authorities to stand trial on rape charges. Bagambiki was recently acquitted by the ICTR of genocide and crimes against humanity, but is still in the care of the Tribunal because he has been unable to find a country willing to take...
Allegations of sexual abuse continue to plague peacekeepers and aid workers in Africa. A study conducted by Save the Children, based on interviews with more than 300 people, has concluded that selling young women for sex has reached epidemic proportions in Liberian camps for the displaced: The children and adults who participated in the study were very open and...
The U.S. has filed an extradition request for Isaac Kwame Amuah, Nelson Mandela's son in-law, with the South African government. Amuah was charged in 1994 with raping a 34-year-old student; later that year, a Connecticut judge allowed him to spend Chrismas in South Africa with his family, on the condition that he would return to the U.S. to stand...
One of the most exciting things about the University of Auckland Faculty of Law, my home in less than a month now, is that a significant percentage of its students and faculty are Maori. So I was very disturbed to come across this article, discussing Philip Morris's recent apology to the Maori for selling "Maori Mix" cigarettes in Israel....
Forbes has published its annual list of the world's 10 wealthiest "Kings, Queens, and Dictators." Heading the list, not surprisingly, are the oil magnates: King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia ($21 billion), Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah of Brunei ($20 billion), and Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the UAE ($19 billion). The first ruler not in...
