In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Recent Posts

25 Apr

That question is raised by the ICC's investigation of the post-election violence in Kenya, which included a number of forcible circumcisions of Luo men.  According to IRIN Africa, although the OPT originally alleged that the forcible circumcision qualified as the crime against humanity "other form of sexual violence" under Article 7(1)(g) of the Rome Statute, the Pre-Trial Chamber reclassified the...

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24 Apr

Fine long article in the Washington Post today by Peter Finn and Anne E. Kornblut on why President Obama has not fulfilled his promise to close Guantanamo Bay.  Detailed, measured, and comprehensive, with an excellent timeline graphic.  I agree with Ben Wittes’ take that the best bit of reporting detail is this: On Obama’s inauguration night, when the new administration instructed military prosecutors...

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22 Apr

Ken's post and the comments following it display an understanding that drones are particularly well suited to this mission because their longer loiter time makes them more discriminating and therefore more capable of proportional strikes than manned aircraft. As someone who has personal experience with the difficulties of discriminating between combatants and civilians while accurately delivering weapons from manned...

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21 Apr

Jack Goldsmith notes at Lawfare: Last Monday Harvard Law School conferred its medal of freedom on one of its graduates, General Mark Martins, Commander of the Rule of Law Field Force -Afghanistan.  The Harvard National Security Journal has just posted the speech, with slides, that General Martins gave for the occasion....

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21 Apr

The US has now deployed armed drones over Libya, according to press reports.  Drone systems have been operating as surveillance systems for weeks now, but acting on a NATO request, the US has now put up at least two weaponized drones in the Libya conflict. The logic of this move is inescapable.  NATO countries launch air strikes against Libyan army assets, making...

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21 Apr

For the students among you ramping up for your international law exams, you're probably glad that you won't have to face this kind of question (which appeared on Professor Beale's 1905 exam at Harvard Law School): Indictment for larceny. The defendant was an officer in the English army detailed to pursue a, band of Indians who had been murdering settlers in...

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19 Apr

The Council of Europe continues to monitor death penalty practices around the world and call out friendly states that fall short of full abolition.  Last week the Council passed a resolution (full text here) reiterating its support for abolition and calling on Belarus (as a potential member state), Japan and the U.S. to join the consensus of democratic, human rights...

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18 Apr

Our friends at the International Law Association pass along the following registration information for the upcoming Asia-Pacific Conference in Taipei, which features a terrific line-up of speakersi: The 2011 International Law Association (ILA) Asia-Pacific Regional Conference will take place in Taipei, Taiwan from May 29 to June 1, 2011. The conference theme is “Contemporary International Law Issues in the Asia Pacific:...

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17 Apr

Publicly, Israel has been nothing but critical of the Goldstone Report.  Netanyahu responded to Goldstone's recent partial retraction, for example, by calling for the "twisted and nonfactual" Report to be thrown "into the dustbin of history." Behind the scenes, however, Israel has taken a different approach.  According to the Jewish Press, the Report has led the IDF to adopt some very...

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16 Apr

According to the Prosecutor, he needs 421 days to review 12,900 pages of documents that the Pre-Trial Chamber recently ordered him to disclose to the Ocampo Six so they can prepare for their confirmation hearings: International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has told the court he needs 421 days to review the evidence to comply with orders given last...

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16 Apr

I’m attending a terrific University of Pennsylvania conference on targeted killing — an interdisciplinary conference with philosophers, lawyers, and national security professionals.  Congratulations to Penn’s Professor Claire Finkelstein for a great meeting. (There are a number of military and former military officers here, but it would be great if the CIA would see its way to sending lawyers to join in meetings like this so that at least some part of its legal views are represented, however cautiously or hypothetically, on crucial normative questions like targeted killing in which public legitimacy matters.) I’ve posted up the working draft of my paper for the conference to SSRN.  “Efficiency” Jus in Bello and “Efficiency” Jus ad Bellum in the Practice of Targeted Killing through Drone Warfare. I’ve put the abstract below the fold.
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