The following article was written by Sonya Sceats, Associate Fellow in International Law at Chatham House in London. It first appeared in The World Today, Chatham House's journal. I am reprinting it here for our readers who are interested in the more recent activities of the Iraqi High Tribunal. Rowdy sessions of the Iraq High Tribunal attracted sensational daily...
Via Crooked Timber, I learned today that Charles Tilly, one of the great political and historical sociologists of his time, has died. The news makes me very sad, because Chuck was one of the most important academic influences in my life: I took every class he offered, from "Introduction to Political Sociology" to a three-person independent study on social...
Now here is a great legal question regarding geographic appellations: Is the term "lesbian" something that the residents of Lesbos, Greece have a legal entitlement to prevent others from misusing? The Associate Press has the story: A Greek court has been asked to draw the line between the natives of the Aegean Sea island of Lesbos and the world's gay women....
The American Lawyer has just published a great article on the future of law firms. The bottom line: successful law firms will be global operations with thousands of lawyers led by an elite group of partners with staggering profits-per-partner. Here is an excerpt: The projections make it clear that U.S. corporate law firms of the future will be...
Simon Chesterman of NYU passed along the following summary and link to the report prepared by NYU Law School's Institute for International Law and Justice in collaboration with the Austrian Government titled, "The UN Security Council and the Rule of Law: The Role of the Security Council in Strengthening a Rule-based International System." It looks to be a useful contribution...
Longtime readers may recall my previous obsession with the seemingly endless Lumber Wars between Canada and the U.S. over Canadian timber subsidies and U.S. tariffs punishing such subsidies. The dispute threatened NAFTA, or at least Chapter 19 of NAFTA, because of the U.S. lumber industry's lawsuit to declare that chapter unconstitutional. Now it turns out that the deal to end...
Last week a Florida state court rendered an interesting decision on the scope of application of the Warsaw Convention. The court recognized that state tort law is preempted by the Warsaw Convention, but the critical question in Bowe v. Worldwide Flight Services was at what point in exiting a plane does the application of the treaty end and state...
I think there is more to Bellinger’s speech on the United States and the ICC than Julian suggests. Let me just summarize the best parts of the speech. First, Bellinger emphasizes that the ICC is not a partisan issue: A relatively straight line runs from the positions on the ICC taken by our Congress in 1990, to those of...
In a curious strategic move, the ICC is threatening to issue more arrest warrants against Sudanese government officials in order to get their original arrest warrants enforced. Luis Moreno Ocampo told Reuters in an interview he planned to present evidence against new suspects to ICC judges before the end of the year if Khartoum does not hand over two suspects...
Has the U.S. government shifted its position on the ICC? I can't really tell if the following report of a speech by U.S. State Department Legal Adviser (and sometime-Opinio Juris guest blogger) John Bellinger represents a real shift in policy. "The U.S. must acknowledge that the ICC enjoys a large body of international support, and that many countries will...
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has taken the first crack at applying the Supreme Court's recent decision in Medellin with respect to self-executing treaties. In Mora v. People of New York, the Second Circuit rejected a foreign national's effort to win damages for violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. Interestingly, the Second...
Here is a sample of some of the wonderful map art of Susan Stockwell: Fleece England...
