In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Recent Posts

27 Aug

Lots of ironies in this story about Kenya hosting Sudan's President Bashir at a ceremony celebrating the establishment of its new "U.S.-style" Constitution. NAIROBI, Kenya - Kenya's president signed a new constitution into law Friday that institutes a U.S.-style system of checks and balances and has been hailed as the most significant political event since Kenya's independence nearly a half century...

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26 Aug

The report is here.  I have neither the time nor the stomach to fully engage with it, but I couldn't let paragraph 82 pass without comment: 82. The United States is currently at war with Al Qaeda and its associated forces. President Obama has made clear that the United States is fully committed to complying with the Constitution and with all...

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26 Aug

So reports Reuters: The Dutch prosecutor's office said on Friday it would look into whether Dutch peacekeeping soldiers should face criminal charges over the 1995 massacre in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica. About 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed at Srebrenica after Bosnian Serb forces overran the United Nations-protected enclave where Dutch troops were ...

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25 Aug

OK, that's not exactly the title of this piece at Huffington Post, but the observations from Gary Arndt about Americans and the World sound true to me.  Arndt has been traveling around the world since 2007, for no particular reason (see his travel blog here and yes, I'm very jealous of his life). Here are some my favorites from his...

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24 Aug

I wanted to flag for interested readers an upcoming event at the British Institute of International & Comparative Law (BIICL). On September 10, BIICL will host its Fifteenth Investment Treaty Forum, with a focus on recent developments in international arbitration procedure. Topics will include disclosure of evidence, state privilege, transparency of hearings, and whether or not investment arbitration is (or should be) different from...

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23 Aug

Last month the Second Circuit issued a remarkable ruling that threatens to upend the longstanding rule of successor state liability for the credit obligations of predecessor states. It did so by ruling that the automatic assumption of liability of sovereign debt of the predecessor state under international law is not a “commercial activity” within the meaning of the FSIA....

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23 Aug

In the interests of being fair and balanced (as always!), I thought I would post on this good response by David Bosco to Jeremy Rabkin's recent essay on the International Criminal Court in The Weekly Standard (which I discussed here).  Although I am not totally convinced by it, I think Bosco offers the best possible defense of the ICC that would...

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21 Aug

[caption id="attachment_13148" align="alignright" width="150" caption=" "][/caption] The WSJ has an article on the U.S. Defense Department's push for a criminal prosecution of Wikileaks for releasing U.S. government documents on the Afghanistan war. Several officials said the Defense and Justice departments were now exploring legal options for prosecuting Mr. Assange and others involved on grounds they encouraged the theft of government property. Bringing a case...

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19 Aug

I have been negligent in failing to post on two excellent assessments of the recent ICC Review Conference in Kampala and its ultimate decision on aggression.  Both assessments (one by Heritage's Brett Schaefer and the other by George Mason's Jeremy Rabkin) give the Obama Administration some credit for limiting the damage to U.S. interests at Kampala.  But both ultimately conclude...

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19 Aug

Dave has kindly sent another post on piracy.  Here it is. Kevin graciously offered me the chance to respond to his contrasting reading of the logic of Judge Jackson’s decision dismissing the piracy charge. But since we both reach the same ultimate conclusion—that the correct legal definition of piracy should be that contained in the 1958 High Seas Treaty/1982 UN Convention...

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19 Aug

I have to respectfully disagree with Dave's interpretation of Judge Jackson's decision.  The decision is almost certainly incorrect from the standpoint of the law of nations; as Dave rightly points out, the definition of piracy in the High Seas Convention and in UNCLOS likely represents the customary standard.  But I think Judge Jackson's decision makes complete sense given the US's...

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