This week on Opinio Juris, Kevin accused the ICC of fiddling while Libya burns, and relayed news in the Libyan press that Al-Senussi's and Gaddafi's trial will start mid-April. He also analysed whether Luis Moreno-Ocampo's possible representation of LRA victims at the ICC would amount to a conflict of interest. Roger followed up on his earlier post about using trade remedies to enforce arbitration awards to...
A tumblr of international law humor. No, not "International law is a joke." Jokes about international law. Seriously....
John Louth at OUP passes along the latest potential twist in Moreno-Ocampo's career path: The former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Mr Luis Moreno Ocampo, has offered to represent the victims of Barlonyo Massacre in the court.Barlonyo village in Agweng Sub-county, Lira District is where more than 400 people were massacred by suspected Lord’s Resistance Army rebels on February...
Just in time for Michelle Obama's speech in Beijing extolling the benefits of free speech and a President Obama/President Xi summit, the NY Times published an article detailing how the U.S National Security Agency infiltrated the systems of Chinese telecom infrastructure giant Huawei. According to documents the Times obtained from the Edward Snowden leak, the NSA "obtained information about the...
According to Lebanon's Daily Star, Libya intends to begin the trial on April 14, just a few weeks from now: Seif al-Islam Kadhafi, Saadi Kadhafi and former spy chief Abdullah Senussi are among more than 30 officials from the ousted regime who are to stand trial on charges ranging from murder to embezzlement. Former premiers Al-Baghdadi al-Mahmudi and Bouzid Dorda are also among those...
Simon Lester has a thoughtful response to my earlier post about using trade remedies to enforce arbitration awards. He questions whether conditioning GSP benefits on compliance with arbitration awards is consistent with WTO obligations. My answer is essentially yes. Because there are so many issues at play, I thought it best to respond in a new post rather...
As widely reported in the press last week, President Obama announced sanctions against Russian and Ukrainian officials. On Thursday, March 20, the “blacklist” was expanded to 2 banks and 20 officials, as detailed in this press release from the US Treasury. Separately, the EU imposed sanctions on 21 individuals, including Russian military commanders. The U.S. goals, President Obama said,...
For quite some time I zealously followed all of the various filings in the Libya cases -- by Libya, al-Senussi and Gaddafi, the Registry, the OPCV, everyone. I also regularly blogged about those filings. But I haven't lately, as consistent readers will know. The reason? The ICC judges seem to have lost all interest in actually making decisions. The record is quite...
Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa The Pentagon has reported that the Obama administration is sending about 150 Special Operations troops along with military aircraft to Uganda to help in the search for warlord Joseph Kony. Suspected Boko Haram fighters have detonated a bomb in a crowded marketplace in northeastern Nigeria killing at least...
Call for Papers The ASIL International Economic Law Interest Group is calling for paper and panel proposals for its 2014 Biennial Research Conference, to be held at the University of Denver's Sturm School of Law, on November 13-15, 2014. The theme of the conference is "Reassessing International Economic Law & Development: New Challenges for Law & Policy". They strongly encourage scholars,...
This week on Opinio Juris, we continued last week's YLS Sale Symposium with a post by Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen describing Sale's legacy as a game of cat and mouse between law and politics, a post by David Martin on the realms of policy and law in refugee protection. In a two part post (1, 2), Guy Goodwin-Gill looked at state practice preceding Sale and...
As I discuss in a recent article published in the Santa Clara Journal of International Law, one of the most significant developments signaling the convergence of trade and arbitration is the use of trade remedies to enforce arbitration awards. This is done primarily when a developed country threatens to remove preferential trade benefits to a developing country if that...
