People often complain here in the U.S. about how the nature of presidential campaigns make it hard for complex and sophisticated ideas to get out (and this is a gross understatement). And the media is often blamed. But the candidates are often just as much as fault. Case in point, Senator Obama's silence on what he thinks of the deadly U.S....
"Chucky" Taylor, son of former Liberian President (and current war crimes defendant) Charles Taylor, was convicted Friday in Florida federal court of committing torture when he was with his father in Liberia. What makes Taylor's conviction news (although only news overseas, apparently, since it didn't make any of the leading U.S. newspapers) is that it is the first conviction under the...
I have posted a substantially rewritten version of my essay "Situational Gravity Under the Rome Statute" on SSRN. Here, again, is the abstract: The ICC is often derided as the "African Criminal Court." That criticism cannot easily be dismissed: all of the Office of the Prosecutor's (OTP) current investigations focus on African states -- Uganda, the Central African Republic, the Democratic...
The last few weeks have seen a flurry of news stories on Iraqi political resistance to the "final" text of a U.S.-Iraqi status of forces agreement ("SOFA"). Last week, the main storyline was that the Iraqi Parliament had better accept the agreed text or else, while the Iraqi Parliament gave every indication they would delay any decision till after U.S. and Iraqi elections. This week the new...
With all the attention being paid to the pending genocide charges against Bashir, the media has largely ignored Moreno-Ocampo's recent announcement that he intends to seek an arrest warrant against rebel commanders in Darfur who are believed to be responsible for a vicious attack on AU peacekeepers in 2007: "In a couple of weeks I will present my third case against...
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Community Court of Justice has found that the West African state of Niger has violated its obligations to protect its citizens for slavery. Specifically, Niger failed to prevent Hadijatou Mani, who was sold into slavery at the age of 12 in 1996 for about £300 and regularly beaten and sexually abused. The Court...
A couple of months ago, I blogged about the possibility that Blackwater would support the African Union's peacekeeping mission in Darfur. That hasn't happened yet, but the company seems to have found another line of work -- fighting pirates off the coast of Somalia: Blackwater Worldwide and other private security firms — some with a reputation for being quick on the...
Of course law school associate deans and admissions people are focused on the internals of this data, but even in the midst of crashing law school endowments, lowered giving, and so on, can we assume at least that law school itself is counter-cyclical to the economy overall? When the economy tanks, students and recent grads take refuge in professional schools?...
Last week the ICJ issued an order for provisional measures (pdf is here) in the Case Concerning Application of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Georgia v. Russian Federation) . This case, along with the recent referral to the ICJ for an advisory opinion on the status of Kosovo, are the latest cases arising out of...
Today, Friday, October 24, is United Nations Day. If you are in the United States, however, your reaction is more likely to be - huh? What United Nations Day? This is not a feature of a right-wing blackout to prevent takeover by the 'black helicopters' - neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post (I checked the paper copies,...
One further side note to the discussion of Roger's article in Virginia journal on Nobel Prize winners ...
I'm just back from 9 days in Madrid -- my first visit, and it was great. Of course, while there I couldn't ignore the international law-related story of the day. Judge Baltasar Garzón (of Pinochet, al Qaeda, and Eta fame) is at it again. This time he's agreed to open a criminal investigation into thousands of disappearances and executions surrounding...
