We now know that there is broad agreement that if Texas Governor Perry goes forward with today's scheduled execution of Humberto Leal, he will be doing so in violation of law. Who has said so? Well, the U.S. government, the U.S. Supreme Court, at least three concurring judges on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, a significant number of members...
The article, Foreign Officials Immunity Determinations in U.S. Courts: The Case Against the State Department, considers the executive branch’s power to make foreign official immunity determinations that are binding in U.S. courts. As many readers know, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act governs the immunity of foreign states in U.S. courts. This statute does not apply to the immunity of individual foreign...
Last week Julian Ku and I had the pleasure of working with Business Roundtable and a wonderful group of international law scholars--Rudolf Dolzer, Burkhard Hess, Herbert Kronke, Davis Robinson, Christoph Schreuer, and Janet Walker--on a Second Circuit amicus brief addressing the propriety of antisuit injunctions under international law. The amicus brief addresses an appeal of Judge Kaplan of the...
In his post below, Harold Koh continually refers to the existence of an "armed conflict" between the U.S. and al Qaeda. Koh does not specify what kind of armed conflict the U.S. believes exists, but he references Common Article 3 in the detention section of the ASIL speech that he quotes, indicating that the U.S. believes it is in a...
The media is reporting that the Obama administration is handling Usama bin Laden's remains in accordance with Islamic principles. That decision is a stark reminder of why we are so fortunate that a Republican is no longer President. When the Bush administration killed Uday and Qusay Hussein, recall, it infuriated Muslims and at least arguably violated the First Additional Protocol...
The following is a guest-post written by Orde Kittrie, a professor at ASU's law school, and Sandy Spector, the deputy director of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. They very much want input from OJ's readership, so please post your thoughts. Our thanks to Orde and Sandy for contributing the post! Seven years after A.Q. Khan publicly confessed to...
A class action complaint filed this week by Guatemalans has all the ingredients for a blockbuster case not unlike the syphilis experiments of Tuskegee, Alabama. Regardless of the outcome of the case, it is a public relations nightmare for the United States. As the complaint alleges, "It has been revealed that despite ...
As I discussed yesterday, an Ecuador Court has issued an $8.6 billion judgment against Chevron. I just got off a press conference call with plaintiff's chief lawyer in Ecuador, Pablo Fajardo. He stated that the plaintiffs will seek enforcement of the Lago Agrio judgment throughout the world as soon as the Ecuador appeals process is complete. (At...
Today an Ecuador court fined Chevron $8.6 billion for environmental damage. According to the Wall Street Journal, $5.4 billion of that is to restore polluted soil, $1.4 billion to create a health system for the community, $800 million to treat individuals injured by the pollution, $600 million to restore polluted waters, $200 million to restore native species, $150 million...
The stakes just became larger in the ongoing battle over alleged environmental damage in Ecuador. Chevron just filed a lawsuit in the Southern District of New York against Steven Donziger and forty-seven lawyers, experts, consultants and named plaintiffs alleging RICO, fraud, tortious interference with contract, trespass and unjust enrichment. The Complaint is available here. The Complaint alleges...
As Bobby Chesney noted at Lawfare a few days ago, the Court of Military Commission Review (CMCR) has issued the following order in al-Bahlul: Upon consideration of the record of trial and pleadings of the parties and amicus curiae, the following issues are specified and oral argument is ordered: I. Assuming that Charges I, II, and III allege underlying ...
The State Department this week released the 2009 volume of its Digest on U.S. Practice in International Law. Kudos to Elizabeth Wilcox for continuing the long tradition of making these sorts of materials publicly available; as I've noted previously, I find the whole Digest project--from Moore's seminal series to the current annual volumes--to be an invaluable resource in doing international law...
