In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Recent Posts

30 Mar

Just in time for the odd Sunday filing deadline, the government of the Philippines announced that it had submitted its memorial in its arbitration with China under UNCLOS. Ignoring a possible backlash from China, the Philippine government transmitted the document, called a “memorial” in international arbitration parlance, on Sunday to the Netherlands-based Permanent Court of Arbitration where a five-member tribunal operating...

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30 Mar

Just follow the lead of Henry Okah, a Nigerian national recently convicted in South Africa (under universal jurisdiction) of terrorism-related offences in the Niger delta. Here are the key paragraphs from the trial court's decision: [28] The correctness of copies of 3 journals kept by the accused in his own handwriting was admitted. In these journals the accused made notes in from...

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30 Mar

Events The Cardozo School of Law is hosting a panel on Privacy, Security, and Secrecy after Snowden on April 2, 2014 - 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., moderated by our own Deborah Pearlstein. From the website: Edward Snowden's recent disclosures about the NSA's surveillance activities have raised important national security and civil liberty questions: How effective is the NSA's surveillance? What are its costs...

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29 Mar

On Monday, the International Court of Justice will announce its long-awaited judgment in Whaling in the Antarctic (Australia v. Japan). The judgment (scheduled for 10 a.m. Hague time) comes almost four years after Australia first filed its application way back in May 2010 (here is one of many prior posts where I complained about the length of time this judgment has...

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29 Mar

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...

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26 Mar

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...

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25 Mar

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...

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25 Mar

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...

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24 Mar

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,...

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24 Mar

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...

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