Many people are surprised that Germain Katanga has dropped his appeal, particularly given Judge Van den Wyngaert's savage dissent. I'm not surprised in the least, because it locks in his sentence, which the OTP planned to appeal. Katanga's 12-year sentence is even shorter than Lubanga's, and he has already spent seven years in pre-trial detention. In fact, he'll be eligible for...
I will be participating in a roundtable about Syria and international justice next Monday night at the LSE. It's free and open to the public, so I hope at least a few OJ readers will come. You can also send questions to the following hashtag: #LSESyriaICC. We will try to answer at least a few of them! Here are the event details: Syria...
As everyone on Twitter knows by now, the US government has released the notorious memorandum in which the OLC provides the supposed legal justification for killing Anwar al-Awlaki. I'm a bit disappointed not to get a mention in the memo; people in the know have suggested that a post I wrote in April 2010 led the OLC to substantially rewrite it. Vanity aside, though, I'm...
Here he is, defending General Sisi, the new President of Egypt: This is a general, but a general who has studied in both the United States and the United Kingdom, so he is certainly someone who is familiar with the rule of law. Because everyone knows that you can't learn about the rule of law outside the West. Duh. PS. Abbott made his silly comment as a way...
Most of the discussion about Abu Khattallah's capture in Libya has focused on the operation's basis -- or lack thereof -- in domestic US law. Less attention has been paid to whether international law permitted the US to use force on Libyan soil. As Marty Lederman recently noted at Just Security, Abu Khattallah's capture can potentially be justified on two different grounds:...
I'm not sure how I missed this, but these are very strong -- and atypically blunt -- allegations by Fatou Bensouda: The International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Fatou Bensouda urged the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to investigate reports that the UN peacekeeping force in Darfur (UNAMID) deliberately contributed in covering up crimes in the restive region. In reference to US-based Foreign Policy...
Full disclosure: Taylor is represented by John Jones QC, who is my colleague at Doughty Street Chambers. Charles Taylor has filed a disturbing motion with the Special Court for Sierra Leone's Residual Mechanism, requesting that he be transferred from prison in the UK to a prison in Rwanda because of his mistreatment by the British government. Here are the key paragraphs from the motion's introduction: Charles...
My co-author John Yoo and I have a piece up on Forbes today arguing that the U.S. Supreme Court missed a grand opportunity in Bond v. U.S. to place constitutional limits on the treaty power. We take aim at Missouri v. Holland head-on. We criticize the interpretation of the Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act adopted by the opinion for the Court...
The conflict between China and Vietnam over a Chinese oil rig has (thankfully) calmed down a little bit, with fewer reports of rammings and water cannon fights in the South China Sea. But the war of press release and government-sponsored editorials has heated up and all of them are wielding international law as a weapon of authority and legitimacy. Vietnam's government...
I want to call readers' attention to a remarkable Israeli NGO, Breaking the Silence, which collects the testimony of Israeli soldiers about the brutalization of Palestinians during the occupation. Here is the NGO's self-description: Breaking the Silence is an organization of veteran combatants who have served in the Israeli military since the start of the Second Intifada and have taken it upon themselves to...