I'm a bit pressed for time, but wanted to offer a brief post calling readers' attention to a US Supreme Court case that came down today -- Lozano v. Montoya Alvarez. In it, a unanimous Court interprets the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction to not allow equitable tolling of the requirement that a child be automatically...
[Expanding and moving this up from the comments section of my previous post.] In a comment to the previous post, reader "Non liquet" noted that: The UN Security Council Meeting was interesting in this regard today. Reportedly, the Russian Ambassador to the UN stated he received a letter from the former President of Ukraine dated 1 March requesting intervention of the Russian...
[I ended my previous post stating that I would next consider the options available to Russia, Ukraine, the EU, and the U.S. But then this conversation started… I’ll come back to the “next steps” question in a following post.] Julian, Eric Posner, and others look to Russia’s intervention in Ukraine and its takeover of Crimea and see the limits of international...
While Russia was stealing all the attention over the weekend, a small group of assailants wielding knives killed at least 33 people and injured over a hundred in the main railway station of Kunming, China. China's government has called these "terrorist attacks," and has hinted it is linked with Uighur separatists in China's northwestern Xinjiang province. But the failure of the U.S....
I agree with Peter that the mere breach of the international law governing the use of force does not mean that all international law is useless and meaningless. But I don't think Eric Posner's pithy challenge to the international law academy on Ukraine can be so easily dismissed. International lawyers need, especially in this area, to provide a meaningful theory...
Saturday began with reports that Russia had seemingly used private security contractors to take control of the airport in Simferopol, Crimea. Then reports (like this one from CNN) of President Putin requesting from Russia’s Parliament an authorization to use military force in Ukraine because of “threats to the lives of Russian citizens and Russian military personnel based in the southern...
Lots of reports, including those from the new Ukrainian government at a meeting of the UN Security Council, suggest that Russian military forces have crossed into Ukraine. This has caused a mild panic on Wall Street and some typically overwrought press reporting from, just to give an example, Britain's Daily Mail. A treaty signed in 1994 by the US and Britain...
I'm getting more and more nervous about events in Ukraine, and particularly in the Crimea. Things are spinning (almost) out of control, and it is worth noting that international legal principles are not helping lead toward a resolution. Instead of working out a negotiated transition, the new leaders of Ukraine have adopted a maximalist position by seizing power and then seeking...
Susanne Mueller, who works at Boston University's African Studies Center, has published a very interesting essay on the relationship between Kenya and the ICC. I want to bring it to our readers' attention, because it's published in the Journal of East African Studies, which many international-law folk may not normally read. Here is the abstract: Kenya's 2013 election was supremely important,...
In a legal wrinkle to the ever-worsening Sino-Japanese relationship, the Chinese government has now publicly backed a lawsuit filed in Beijing courts against Japanese companies that used Chinese citizens as forced laborers during World War II. The lawsuit names Mitsubishi Materials Corporation and Mitsui Mining and Smelting as defendants and asks for compensation of 1 million yuan ($163,000) for each defendant...
As China continues to offend or at least alarm its neighbors in East and Southeast Asia with its expansive territorial and maritime claims, it is worth noting there is one important Asian player who wholeheartedly supports each and everyone one of China's sovereignty claims: Taiwan. (Taiwan's government even supports China's sovereignty claim over Taiwan, just disputing which government is "China".) In...
According to VOA News, the Ukrainian Parliament would like the ICC to investigate recently-deposed President Yanukovych: Ukraine’s parliament voted on Tuesday to send fugitive President Viktor Yanukovych to be tried for ‘serious crimes’ by the International Criminal Court once he has been captured. A resolution, overwhelmingly supported by the assembly, linked Yanukovych, who was ousted on Saturday and is now on the...
