In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Recent Posts

29 Jun

Most Court-watchers spent the day examining the Ricci case (a.k.a. the New Haven Firefighters' case), given its racial dimensions and the fact that Judge Sotomayor participated in the Second Circuit opinion that the Court overturned.  I, however, was more interested to see that the Court granted certiorari today in another Sotomayor-related case, Abbott v. Abbott.  This is the Fifth Circuit case I mentioned...

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29 Jun

Events in Honduras occurred while I was in a plane on a long flight, so I do not have enough of a grasp of what the facts are, or appear to be, to offer an opinion.  However, I wanted to note that, whatever they are exactly, they seem to have touched off an interesting, and not inconsequential debate, over what...

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29 Jun

I have posted a new essay on SSRN: "Completion Strategies and the Office of the Prosecutor."  The essay is my contribution to a multi-year research workshop at Catholic University Leuven on the history of the prosecutor in international criminal law; the workshop will culminate in a book to be published by Oxford in 2010.  Here is the abstract: With the exception...

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28 Jun

The New York Times (along with much of the mainstream media) has "rediscovered" cyberwar of late (see here, here, here, and here).  Today's story revives longstanding differences between Russian government proposals to regulate cyberwarfare by treaty versus existing U.S. preferences to place the issue in more informal law enforcement cooperation networks: Russia favors an international treaty along the lines of those negotiated for...

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28 Jun

Moises Naim of Foreign Policy has an essay in the new issue called "Minilateralism: The magic number to get real international action." His piece has spawned reactions from the bloggers at FP.com. Naim's essay is the latest volley in a debate on "big" or "small" multilateral action should be; however, although he and other bloggers do a good job setting out the...

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27 Jun

The organization whose board meeting I'm attending in Prague is the Media Development Loan Fund, and you can see its newly revamped website at mdlf.org.  It is a media assistance organization, one that focuses on helping media companies - newspapers, radio, TV, internet - in the emerging market and developing world that provide a sizable amount of quality newsreporting.  Unlike...

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27 Jun

A quick update on the OTP's efforts to include genocide charges in Bashir's arrest warrant.  Pre-Trial Chamber I has now granted leave to appeal the issue I've discussed before -- whether it misunderstood Article 58's "reasonable grounds" requirement when it rejected the genocide charges. It's a very defensive decision, almost certainly written by Judge Steiner, who is the only holdover from...

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27 Jun

Omri Casspi has become the first Israeli basketball player to be selected in the first round of the NBA draft.  Casspi was drafted #23 by the Sacramento Kings, which also feature players from Spain (Sergio Rodriguez), Argentina (Andres Nocioni), and Slovenia (Beno Udrih). Basketball fans know that Casspi's Israeli team, Maccabi Tel Aviv, is one of the world's best.  The team...

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26 Jun

It seems likely that Spain is about drastically curtail its universal jurisdiction law--the law that had been used by Magistrate Baltasar Garzon to go after Augusto Pinochet--such that it really won't be universal jurisdiction at all.  While some (many?) of my international law colleagues may view this as a step backwards, I welcome this adjustment as a prudent move that will foster...

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26 Jun

Frequent Opinio Juris commentor Patrick O'Donnell has an informative post at Ratio Juris about shari'ah and jurisprudence in Islam. It begins: Having recently introduced the subjects of constitutionalism and democracy vis-à-vis Islam, I thought it would help to say a few basic things about Sharī‘ah and fiqh, in particular as they have bearing upon our concerns about human rights and democracy, concerns of...

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