Now that I've had a chance to read through the ICJ's advisory opinion, following are a few initial reactions. (I will consider the separate opinions in another post.) Marko Milanovic has done a great job parsing the main issues that were at bar, namely 1. Whether the ICJ should exercise advisory jurisdiction in this case; 2. How broadly or narrowly the question posed by...
As I predicted, the Pre-Trial Chamber has approved genocide charges for Bashir: The International Criminal Court has issued a second arrest warrant for Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir - this time for charges of genocide. He already faces charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, which he denies. The ICC first indicted him in March 2009 but he has not...
I don't make that claim lightly. Despite my belief that Moreno-Ocampo has been a disaster as a prosecutor, I have consistently opposed calls for his removal, whether because of his retaliation against an employee for accusing him of sexual harassment or because he decided to pursue genocide charges against Bashir. I even opposed his ouster when his misuse of confidentiality...
Not according to Yaacov Lozowick, an Israeli historian: Here's my input, on a point no-one else seems to be noticing: There was no Nazi invasion of the Sudetenland, no invasion of Slovakia, hardly one of Austria and even less of Bohemia. Nazi Germany brutally invaded many countries, but those weren't among them. Go check the history books and...
I am in Israel this week on a nationwide tour with Jewish, Christian and Muslim leaders from Los Angeles to examine in detail the current state of Israeli-Palestinian relations. We have heard from Arab and Jewish members of the Knesset, visited hot spots along the Green Line, toured holy sites together, spoken with journalists who report from both sides...
[Margaret V. Sachs is the Robert Cotten Alston Professor of Law at the University of Georgia School of Law and an expert on securities law] The Supreme Court yesterday issued its decision in Morrison v. National Australia Bank, its first ever on the international reach of Section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5. Justice Scalia wrote for the Court, with additional...
That’s a remarkable statement, but it actually is true. Yesterday the Supreme Court in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project addressed the question of whether a federal statute criminalizing the provision of “material support” to terrorist organizations was constitutional. A humanitarian NGO group wanted to train members of two terrorist organizations, the PKK and the LTTE, to become more...
Someone should tell Mr. Netanyahu that he is supposed to wait until after the inquiry to announce its predetermined findings: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the start of Monday's cabinet meeting that the main goal of the Gaza flotilla probe is to prove to the world that the Israel Navy operation on the Gaza-bound aid ship was...
The Jerusalem Post reports that the Turkish government, in collaboration with Hamas, is considering applying to the International Court of Justice over the Gaza Flotilla incident. The agreement to work together against Israel reportedly came in a Thursday telephone conversation between Turkey's justice minister, Sadullah Ergin and his Hamas counterpart, Muhammad Faraj Al-Ghoul. As the article points out, it is far from...
A few days ago, I recorded a conversation for Bloggingheads.tv with Mark Leon Goldberg of the invaluable UN Dispatch. It was a wide ranging discussion -- and long, 45 minutes -- covering everything from the Gaza blockade to the definition of aggression to drone attacks. Something tells me, though, that the only thing people will remember is my description of...
Despite the increasingly desperate nature of the attacks on Judge Goldstone, I never thought an academic institution would give in to the hysteria: In response to an enquiry by the Alternative Information Center (AIC) about its reported removal of Judge Richard Goldstone from the Board of Governors, Hebrew University of Jerusalem responded by email that: "The Hebrew University of Jerusalem...
This would be amusing, were the Obama administration not backing Israel's insistence that any investigation into the attack on the flotilla be conducted (read: whitewashed) by Israel itself: When placed under journalistic scrutiny, the IDF is being forced to admit that its claims about the flotilla’s links to international terror are based on innuendo, not facts. On June...
