In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Europe

24 Oct

Last week the ICJ issued an order for provisional measures  (pdf is here) in the Case Concerning Application of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Georgia v. Russian Federation) . This case, along with the recent referral to the ICJ for an advisory opinion on the status of Kosovo, are the latest cases arising out of...

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23 Oct

I'm just back from 9 days in Madrid -- my first visit, and it was great.  Of course, while there I couldn't ignore the international law-related story of the day.  Judge Baltasar Garzón (of Pinochet, al Qaeda, and Eta fame) is at it again.  This time he's agreed to open a criminal investigation into thousands of disappearances and executions surrounding...

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09 Oct

Serbia might want the ICJ to opine on the legality of Kosovo's independence, but it seems that the horse is already out of the barn.  Even Macedonia and Montenegro have now recognized Kosovo, the latter particularly irking the Serbian government: Montenegro's announcement sparked outrage in Belgrade, which along with key ally Russia has been vehemently opposing the split. Serbia in a...

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21 Sep

Two interesting trials involving very old defendants began last week. The first, in Poland, involves General Wojciech Jaruzelski, who orchestrated the Polish government's brutal repression of Solidarity in 1981: The 85-year-old man, who was once the very symbol of communist repression, faces a possible ten-year jail sentence for “directing a criminal organisation” – a reference to the Military Council that imposed...

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15 Sep

Spiegel Online has posted a fascinating interview with Rafi Eitan, a former Mossad agent who is now a minister in the Israeli cabinet.  According to Eitan, Mengele was also in Buenos Aires when Eichmann was captured -- and would have shared Eichmann's fate but for the Mossad's lack of boots on the ground: SPIEGEL: Josef Mengele fled Germany for South America...

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29 Aug

I have blogged in the past about the growing phenomenon of 'libel tourism' and its chilling effects upon free expression, as well as some (really, considering the free expression issues under threat, quite modest) New York state and US federal legislative efforts to deal with it.  It amounts to using English courts and their views on libel, together with the...

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24 Aug

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about my experiences in Georgia in the early 1990s, monitoring the various conflicts - Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and the then-Georgian civil war in Tbilisi.  I noted that those secessionist conflicts were marked on each side by ethnic cleansing as extreme as anything I saw in the Yugloslav wars (a country which I also...

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20 Aug

I have this gnawing suspicion that the only two law professors deeply interested in battlefield robotics are Glenn Reynolds and me.  Nonetheless, when it comes to battlefield bots and the law, you can take satisfaction that you will have Heard It Here First, unless, of course, you read Instapundit.   As I've said in earlier posts on this subject (and here and...

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19 Aug

For anyone following the situation in Georgia and US/ Russian relations, there was a very interesting statement and Q&A today from Secretary of State Rice, who is in Brussels for meetings at NATO. Among other things, she announced the creation of a new NATO-Georgia cooperative framework and also discussed the concerns about isolating Russia. Among other topics, she also answered questions about...

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