In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Regions

13 Jun

Public Citizen, an anti-free trade group based here in the U.S., sent around an email detailing its objections to a leaked draft text of the ongoing TransPacific Partnership negotiations, which would create a massive Pacific free-trade zone.  Its main complaint is not actually to the free-trade portion of the agreement, but to the proposals for a robust investor-state dispute resolution...

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11 Jun

[Mark A. Drumbl is the Class of 1975 Alumni Professor at Washington and Lee University and author of Reimagining Child Soldiers (OUP, 2012).] Assuredly, discussion of the Charles Taylor sentence might revolve around its length – 50 years, for a 64 year-old man – and the proportionality between such a heavy sentence and the fact that most (but certainly not all) of his criminal...

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10 Jun

Like most people who believe in international criminal justice, I'm frustrated by the Sudanese government's ability to stonewall the ICC regarding its innumerable crimes in Darfur.  But reactions like these don't help: Moreno-Ocampo, who stands down as ICC chief prosecutor in two weeks, called on the Security Council to take tougher action to detain President Omar al-Bashir and other Sudanese officials...

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07 Jun

The Office of the Prosecutor has filed its response to Libya's challenge to the admissibility of the cases against Saif Gaddafi and Abdullah al-Senussi.  There are a number of interesting aspects to the response.  First, it says nothing about the case of al-Senussi.  That's a curious omission, given that the response specifically points out with regard to Saif (para. 41)...

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04 Jun

[Marina Aksenova is a Researcher/PhD Candidate in complicity issues in international criminal law at the European University Institute.] The Special Court for Sierra Leone recently convicted Charles Taylor to 50 years of imprisonment. This pronouncement stirred public debate as to whether this sentence is acceptable. Kevin Jon Heller, for example, expressed his concern about the length of Taylor’s sentence, mainly because it resonates with the Trial Chamber finding that Taylor is a mere accomplice, rather than a primary perpetrator of the crimes committed during the Sierra Leonean civil war. Arguably, 50 years of imprisonment is a disproportionately lengthy sentence for this type of criminal participation. This conclusion, in turn, leads to a more general question as to whether there was sufficient evidence before the court to find Taylor responsible as a perpetrator in the joint criminal enterprise – a mode of liability that usually justifies heavier sentences. It appears that the judges of the SCSL placed Taylor “in a class of his own” when deciding upon his punishment. His leadership role as the former president of Liberia, and not the particular way in which he got involved in the crimes, appears to have played the central role at sentencing. More detailed analysis will have to wait until the sentencing judgment is released, some initial thoughts could be outlined here. I would like to defend the length of the sentence imposed on Taylor and the mode of criminal participation under which he stands convicted. I am not trying to assess the evidence presented in the proceedings and the appropriateness of Chamber’s findings on the merits. Rather, my goal is to support the hypothesis that complicity, as a mode of liability, is compatible with a relatively heavy punishment given to Taylor. I agree with the Trial Chamber’s decision to assign relatively little weight to Taylor’s form of participation, mainly because it is just one of the factors to be considered at sentencing, and not the definitive one. This is especially true in the absence of the sentencing regime in international criminal law, which would require the judges to follow guidelines or certain rules at sentencing or give reasons for the departure, as it is the case, for example, in England and Wales. In fact, most national jurisdictions follow the principle nulla poena sine lege by stipulating sentencing tariffs in the statutes or formal sentencing guidelines. Usually, these provisions explain the relative importance (if any) to be attributed to the mode of participation of the convicted person.
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01 Jun

[Stephen G.A. Pitel is Associate Professor at Western University, Faculty of Law] On May 30, 2012, residents of Ecuador started an action in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice seeking to enforce a judgment in their favour of an Ecuadorian court against Chevron.  The amount of the judgment is a staggering $18 billion.  Chevron has announced that it will resist the enforcement litigation in Ontario. Under Ontario’s common law, confirmed relatively recently by the Supreme Court of Canada in Beals v Saldanha, the test for whether a court will enforce a foreign judgment ordering the payment of money has three requirements.  First, the judgment must be final.  Second, the court granting the judgment must have had jurisdiction on a particular basis.  This is sometimes called jurisdiction in the international sense or jurisdictional competence.  Third, the judgment must be for a fixed sum of money and not a tax or penalty.  In general see Stephen G.A. Pitel & Nicholas S. Rafferty, Conflict of Laws at 159-73. On the first requirement, a judgment is considered to be final even though there is time remaining within which to launch an appeal or an appeal has in fact been launched (as is the case here): Nouvion v Freeman (1889), 15 App Cas 1 (HL) at 10-11 and 13.  However, in such a situation it is relatively straightforward for the defendant in the enforcement proceedings to obtain a stay of the action on the basis that the court should await the results of the appeal.  It would seem likely that Chevron could have the Ontario proceedings stayed pending the results of the appeal in Ecuador.  Even if the enforcement proceedings are stayed, starting them can still have advantages to the plaintiff.  The stay does not stop the plaintiff attempting to obtain a Mareva injunction to freeze assets or other forms of interlocutory relief.
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30 May

The shoe has finally dropped. Ever since the Invictus Memo was released to the public we knew that the Ecuadorian Plaintiffs were considering twenty-seven different countries to enforce the $18.2 Ecuadorian judgment against Chevron. With Chevron's far-flung assets, it was plausible that the Plaintiffs would choose to enforce the judgment in countries with close ties to Ecuador and...

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30 May

So reports The Guardian: Liberia's former president, Charles Taylor, has been sentenced to 50 years in jail for being "in a class of his own" when committing war crimes during the long-running civil war in neighbouring Sierra Leone. Judges at a UN-backed tribunal in The Hague said his leadership role and exploitation of the conflict to extract so-called "blood diamonds" meant he...

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22 May

Evelyne Schmid, a lecturer in law at Bangor University in Wales, has taken it upon herself to convert the 2,499 page non-searchable PDF into a searchable (but, alas, still 2,499 pages) text file. She has made the file available here. We all owe her our thanks! ...

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22 May

So reports ABC News (and multiple other news outlets): The man who ran Libya's extensive spy network and was considered one of the closest confidants of ex-leader Moammar Gadhafi was indicted in Mauritania on Monday and transferred to a public jail, according to a justice official. Abdullah al-Senoussi, Libya's former head of intelligence, is wanted by the International Criminal Court, as well...

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