In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Recent Posts

03 Nov

The Virginia Journal of International Law is delighted to continue its partnership with Opinio Juris this week in this online symposium featuring three pieces recently published by VJIL in Vol. 50:1, available here. On Wednesday, Professor Alexander K.A. Greenawalt, Associate Professor of Law, Pace University School of Law, will discuss Complementarity in Crisis: Uganda, Alternative Justice, and the International Criminal Court....

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02 Nov

As both Julian and Ken (at VC) have indicated that they believe Arar was rightly decided by the Second Circuit, it's worth noting that Guido Calabresi -- hardly a flaming liberal -- is dissenting in the case, describing the majority's decision as "extraordinary judicial activism."  Scott Horton discusses Calabresi's dissent -- and notes that the majority decision is based on...

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02 Nov

Niamh Hayes, a PhD candidate the Irish Centre for Human Rights and an intern on the Karadzic case, has a very useful guest post at the International Law Bureau about how the Trial Chamber might respond to Dr. Karadzic's boycott.  The entire post is well worth a read, but I was particularly struck by Niamh's suggestion that Dr. Karadzic's actions...

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02 Nov

Maher Arar, a Canadian who was detained by the U.S. and the subject of an "extraordinary rendition" to Syria, has lost his bid to maintain his lawsuit in U.S. courts.  By a 7-4 vote, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, sitting en banc, has voted to dismiss his suit against U.S. government officials for alleged violations of...

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02 Nov

Okey-dokey: The political bureau officer at the NCP Mandoor Al-Mahdi also accused the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo of standing behind the hybrid court proposal. “After Ocampo failed in furthering his agenda through the ICC he now wants to find another entry though the so-called hybrid court” Al-Mahdi said. This week the ICC prosecutor hailed the special tribunal proposal made by...

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01 Nov

This isn't going to help the Panel's credibility: The African Union (AU) high level panel on Darfur wanted to find a way out for Sudanese president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir from the International Criminal Court (ICC) indictment, one of the commission members said today in an interview. This week the AU Peace and Security Council (PSC) endorsed a report prepared by an eight-member...

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01 Nov

Two of our PhD students, James Parker and Rebecca Goodbourn, have asked me to post the following call for papers: Following the success of last year’s Postgraduate and Early Career Researchers’ Workshop on Methodological Approaches to Legal Scholarship, we are pleased to announce the inaugural Melbourne Forum on Doctoral Legal Research. This annual Forum will provide a space for participants to...

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01 Nov

If you are going to be around the DC area this upcoming Tuesday morning, and are interested in the current discussion over the issues of the torture memos, my colleagues in the WCL program on law and government have organized a terrific program. Tuesday, November 3, 2009, at Washington College of Law: “The Torture Memos: Lawyers, Ethics, and the Rule of...

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01 Nov

From the Sudan Tribune: The Sudanese government today reiterated its rejection the proposal set of an African Union (AU) to setup hybrid tribunals to try Darfur war crimes suspects. Speaking to reporters in Cairo the Sudanese presidential adviser Mustafa Osman Ismail said that Khartoum accepts the AU report “in its generalities” and the “African solution for the Darfur crisis”. Asked about the hybrid...

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31 Oct

Clinton seems like she's been a relatively competent Secretary of State, but her take on the news that Abdullah Abdullah will not participate in Afghanistan's runoff election is truly priceless: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, traveling in Abu Dhabi, gave the administration’s only comment. “We see that happen in our own country where, for whatever combination of reasons, one of...

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29 Oct

I can't make the swearing-in on account of classes, but I wanted to offer my public congratulations to Lee Feinstein, who is being sworn in tomorrow at DOS as US Ambassador to Poland.  Lee is an old friend, someone who combines first rate brains with outstanding judgment, and he is a great pick to represent the United States to an...

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29 Oct

Having been pilloried from all sides about my insistence that Dr. Karadzic should be given more time to prepare for trial, it's important to note that I am not the only one who thinks that.  Bogdan Ivanisevic, who works for the International Center for Transitional Justice -- a group that can hardly be accused of being soft on Dr. Karadzic...

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