I hope I'm not stepping on the toes of my Wronging Rights friends, but I couldn't ignore why Linsdey Lohan thinks she doesn't deserve to be sent to jail for 90 days for violating her probation: It is clearly stated in Article 5 of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights that...
Morton Abramowitz and James Hooper have a very interesting analysis in the National Interest of the likely effect of the soon-to-be released ICJ advisory opinion in Kosovo. The analysis is not legal, but political. And the bottom line, Kosovo is far from out of the woods, even if the judgment is favorable to Kosovo statehood: No one knows what the court will do, but: —If...
I discovered the error this morning, as I was re-reading the Appeals Chamber decision for the joint criminal enterprise section of my book on the Nuremberg Military Tribunals. The decision cites Einsatzgruppen as an example of JCE I, "basic" joint criminal enterprise, and then attributes the following quote to the Einsatzgruppen tribunal (para. 200): the elementary principle must be borne in...
Julian's link to the WSJ blog post forces me to aim for something a little more coherent (apologies, I didn't know they were doing the interview format - thought they were on the usual fishing expedition for a soundbite or two). The bottom line: I think there's a pretty good chance the S.B. 1070 will be enjoined before it goes...
Our own Peter Spiro talks to the Wall Street Journal's Law Blog on today's filing of a federal lawsuit against Arizona's immigration law. The grounds for the lawsuit, as expected, is preemption, even though most of the political debate about the lawsuit is concerned with racial discrimination. The choice of preemption confirms my assessment that an equal protection challenge to...
Surely one of the great things about a career in international law is the travel. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have found a profession that afforded me opportunities to visit (or even live in) a diverse set of destinations, whether it was Nairobi or Geneva, Buenos Aires or Jakarta, Osaka or St. Petersburg, and, yes, even Doha in the summer (and...
Not according to Yaacov Lozowick, an Israeli historian: Here's my input, on a point no-one else seems to be noticing: There was no Nazi invasion of the Sudetenland, no invasion of Slovakia, hardly one of Austria and even less of Bohemia. Nazi Germany brutally invaded many countries, but those weren't among them. Go check the history books and...
From the AP account of the Kagan confirmation hearing of the now presumably de rigueur question of candidates ...
I am in Israel this week on a nationwide tour with Jewish, Christian and Muslim leaders from Los Angeles to examine in detail the current state of Israeli-Palestinian relations. We have heard from Arab and Jewish members of the Knesset, visited hot spots along the Green Line, toured holy sites together, spoken with journalists who report from both sides...
I wanted to thank all of the contributors (Bill Dodge, Austen Parrish, Margaret Sachs) to our discussion here about the recent Supreme Court decision on the extraterritorial application of U.S. securities laws in Morrison v. National Australia Bank. I wanted to also point readers toward some very wise and interesting comments on the decision from Prof. Hannah Buxbaum (over...
[caption id="attachment_12870" align="alignright" width="300" caption=" "][/caption] The U.N. General Assembly and Security Council today voted to elect Xue Hanqin (薛捍勤) of China to membership on the International Court of Justice. Xue will fill out the rest of the Judge Shi Jiuyong's term, which runs until 5 February 2012. As I noted before, Xue has an extensive experience as a diplomat as well as...
More than any other counterterrorism tactic, targeted killing operations display the tension between addressing terrorism as a crime and addressing it as war. The right of a government to use deadly force against a citizen is constrained by both domestic criminal law and international human rights norms that seek to protect the individual’s right to life and liberty. In law enforcement, individuals are punished for their individual guilt. Guilt must be proven in a court of law, with the individual facing trial enjoying the protections of due process guarantees. Killing an individual without trial is allowed only in very limited circumstances, such as self- defense (where the person poses an immediate threat) or the immediate necessity of saving more lives. In almost any other case, it would be clearly unlawful, tantamount to extrajudicial execution or murder.
