As advertised, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has released the ICC's first two indictments arising out of its investigation of war crimes in the Darfur region of Sudan. As the BBC reports, the ICC has named Ahmad Muhammad Harun, former Minister of State for the Interior of the Government of the Sudan and the current Minister...
There's a move afoot to extend honorary citizenship to Anne Frank (report here). The impulse is obviously a benign one, by way of making amends for the US failure to issue timely visas to her and her family. But might there be a little hubris involved here as well, something of an assumption that she would have been...
OK, I admit I haven't read all 351 pages of the ICJ's judgment in the Bosnia Genocide case. This is a rich and potentially important decision. But here are some initial observations and reactions, along with (after the jump), some key excerpts from the ICJ's opinion. (1) The key headline holding is that Serbia (the state) is not...
The ICJ has released its judgment in the Case Concerning the Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro). The Court affirmed it had jurisdiction and found that although Serbia could not be held responsible for genocide, Serbia had violated its obligations under the Genocide Convention...
[Andrew Kent is a Climenko Fellow at Harvard Law School and beginning next year will be a professor of law at Fordham Law School] Let me start by thanking Opinio Juris for giving me a chance to offer some preliminary thoughts about the D.C. Circuit’s recent decision in Boumediene / Odah Guantanamo detainee litigation. 1. The threshold statutory issue...
The international law blogosphere is now less lonely — and more gender balanced. The new group blog IntLawGrrls currently has six members, five of whom use pseudonyms of famous women that, with the exception of Mata Hari, I've never heard of. (Which probably makes their point.) The contributors are: Diane Marie Amann (Davis);...
OK, it's not quite 1780 all over again, but the NYT reports that the U.S. and France have joined forces to protest the application of London's "congestion" pricing scheme to employees of their respective embassies. The U.S-French position (which is joined by a number of other countries) is buttressed by the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. I believe the...
[Tom Lee is a professor of law at Fordham Law School.] On February 16, 2007, the Sixth Circuit (Keith) published a unanimous opinion in Tavaeras v. Tavarez, a suit brought under the Alien Tort Statute (28 U.S.C. 1350). That hoary and storied statute states: “The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for...
Canada is so close to the United States — yet sometimes it seems thousands of miles away politically. Exhibit 1: the Supreme Court of Canada has unanimously struck down a controversial security-certificate process used to detain terrorism suspects on the ground that the process violates the right to life, liberty, and security of the person:The security certificate process is...
There is an interesting story in today's New York Times about the prosecution of a man in Montenegro for a murder he allegedly committed in New York in 1990. According to the report, authorities in 1990 found Mary Beal in pieces, stuffed in garbage bags that were strewn in Brooklyn near the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge, the police...
It's that time of year. This week, students from around the United States are competing in the regional rounds of the Phillip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition. Meanwhile, national competitions are taking place all over the globe, all leading up to the international rounds in Washington D.C. at the end of March. Nor is...
As I mentioned earlier, the International Court of Justice will be announcing its judgment in the Bosnia-Serbia genocide case on Monday, February 26, at 10 a.m. GMT +1:00. The following day, Tuesday, February 27, at 14:00 GMT +1:00, the International Criminal Court will announce its first indictments in the Sudan Darfur investigations. The question for the ICC will...
