[David J. Simon is the Director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University.] It is something of a cliché to call a newly published book an “achievement.” I can think of no better word, however, to describe Gregory Gordon’s Atrocity Speech Law. This is the rare book on legal doctrine that is engaging and digestible to lawyers, legal academics, and non-lawyers...
[Mark A. Drumbl is the Class of 1975 Alumni Professor of Law and Director, Transnational Law Institute at Washington and Lee University.] Atrocity Speech Law is a hefty book. It is, as Professor Gordon himself describes it, a ‘tome’. Atrocity Speech Law is rigorous and ambitious: packed with information, breathtakingly detailed, brimming with integrity, and vivified by important themes of law...
[Roger S. Clark is the Board of Governors Professor of Law at Rutgers Law School.] Several important themes are developed alongside one another in Gregory Gordon’s remarkable book on the activity for which he coins the term “atrocity speech law.” They are captured largely in his sub-title “Foundation, Fragmentation and Fruition” and in his summary of the “fruition” points at pp....
[Gregory Gordon is Associate Professor of Law, Associate Dean for Development and External Affairs and Director of the Research Postgraduates Programme at The Chinese University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law. He was formerly a prosecutor with the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Special Investigations.] I have always felt that great scholarship is born...
Over the next three days we will have an online discussion concerning Gregory Gordon’s new book Atrocity Speech Law: Foundation, Fragmentation, Fruition (Oxford 2017). We welcome Professor Gordon (The Chinese University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law), as well as Roger Clark (Rutgers Law), Mark Drumbl (Washington and Lee School of Law), and David Simon (Yale Dept. of Political Science), who...
[Rishi Gulati is a Barrister at the Victorian Bar, Australia; Dickson Poon Scholar of Law at King’s College London; and Academic Expert, Bretton Woods Law, London. This is the second of a two part post concerning recent litigation against the International Finance Corporation (‘IFC’) in US courts. Part I is available here.] The recent case of Jam et al v International Finance...
[Rishi Gulati is a Barrister at the Victorian Bar, Australia; Dickson Poon Scholar of Law at King’s College London; and Academic Expert, Bretton Woods Law, London] Following the conclusion of the much discussed Haiti Cholera Class Action in US courts, the immunities of international organisations (IOs) have again been tested in the courts of that country in claims filed against the...
I have filed an amicus brief in the Al Bahlul case. Al Bahlul was charged and convicted before a military commission for multiple offenses including conspiracy. On appeal, several of the charges were thrown out, but the conspiracy conviction remains and is the subject of his cert petition before the U.S. Supreme Court. Although the government once held the position...
Waiver of immunity is at the center of another cholera case against the UN, this time in the Eastern District of New York. In LaVenture et al v. United Nations, the plaintiffs argue that they have two distinct questions on waiver that distinguish this litigation from the recent decision upholding the UN's absolute immunity in Georges et al. The questions...
Cross-posted at Balkinization If, as I argued earlier this week, the 2001 AUMF passed by Congress cannot be read to authorize the growing set of U.S. military actions against Syrian and Iranian forces in Syria, does the President’s Article II power standing alone support these strikes? The best articulated argument I’ve seen that the President has the Article II power to...
As many readers are probably aware, the ACLU is currently bringing an ATS action against the two psychologists, James Mitchell and John Jessen, who allegedly designed and administered the CIA's torture program. Here is the ACLU's summary of the case, Salim v. Mitchell: The CIA paid the two men and the company they later formed tens of millions of dollars over the...
[Luigi Prosperi received his PhD in "International legal order and human rights" from Sapienza University of Rome, honorary fellow in International Law at Sapienza University, formerly Associate Legal Officer at ICTY.] Last week, the Appeals Chamber (AC) of the ICC unanimously rejected Bosco Ntaganda’s Defence appeal against the 4 January decision of the Trial Chamber VI (TC), which had found that...
