The BBC reports that the Ugandan government and the rebel Lord's Resistance Army has reached a truce in the 20 year civil war that may eventually lead to a comprehensive peace agreement. As we noted on this blog, the apparent success of this round of peace talks has been an informal assurance by the International Criminal Court that it would...
Professor William J. Stuntz, the Henry J. Friendly Professor of Law at Harvard has a very persuasive and well-argued essay in the Weekly Standard analyzing and rejecting arguments for a U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq. Stuntz is a very smart guy and a leading professor of criminal law. But even though I tend to agree with him here,...
A Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist, Paul Salopek, is being held in a Sudanese jail on charges of espionage. Salopek and his driver and his interpreter, both Chadian nationals who were similarly charged, were arrested in Darfur on August 6th, where Salopek was on assignment for National Geographic. On Tuesday, Representatives Chris Shays and Brian Higgins were able to visit...
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke gave an important speech on Friday regarding global economic integration. It provides one of the best glimpses of the new Fed Chairman's vision of economic globalism. In essence it is a statement of what is old and what is new about the current wave of globalism. It also is a wonderful speech...
And, following up on a different posting ...
With all respect, I believe my summary of the substantive non-jurisdictional issues raised by the genocide claim was, while brief, quite complete, non-tendentious, and fully engaged in the substance. I stated quite clearly that Ahmadinejad called for the elimination of the state of Israel. While I think it is well understood that this would be accomplished by military means involving...
I read with great interest Professor Bell's analysis of whether the ICC would have jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute President Ahmadinejad for direct and public incitement to genocide. I just want to to point out that the jurisdictional question he discusses is actually more complicated than he suggests. The critical Article is Article 12, "Preconditions to the Exercise of Jurisdiction,"...
Haaretz reports on the progress of an attempt by a handful of retired Israeli diplomats to sue Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the ICC for incitement to genocide. The story does note the teeny-tiny problem with the attempt: neither Israel nor Iran is a party to the Rome Statute. By my reading of the Statute, this renders all...
The International Astronomical Union decided yesterday to downgrade Pluto's status as a planet (see report here). And just like that, the solar system has been reduced to eight planets. Although there is some grumbling, there seems little doubt the world will accept the IAU's judgment, even the IAU is a non-governmental international association. Talk about power! I'm sure folks...
Here is a survey that will strike fear in the heart of Tom Friedman. According to a survey released yesterday by Pew Research, Americans put far too little pressure on their kids to do well in school, particularly in comparison to their counterparts in Asia. "Have American parents become too pushy about their kids' education? Many experts seem...
The BBC reports that delegates in New York appear to be close to an agreement on a Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. This new, potentially expansive human rights treaty, will be submitted to the U.N. General Assembly this September and then opened for signatures and ratifications in the fall. I don't have any views on the...
The Jerusalem Post published a short piece of mine about Human Rights Watch and its accusations of Israeli war crimes in the recent Lebanon war. The two second version of the piece: Human Rights Watch accused Israel of the war crime of indiscriminate bombing in the Lebanese village of Srifa, where, according to Human Rights Watch, Israel killed forty-something...
