I rarely get to blog about the relationship between my two favorite things -- professional basketball and international law -- so I would be remiss if I failed to comment on the latest problem to afflict the New Jersey Nets, one of the worst teams in the NBA. The Nets are in the process of being sold to Mikhail Prokhorov,...
This is probably just posturing, but it would be a rather dramatic turn of events if the IWC ended up a casualty of the vociferous Australian campaign against Japanese whaling. I see the Kiwis are trying to play mediator. The international body to control whaling worldwide could collapse if a deal cannot be reached to allow restricted commercial whaling, New Zealand's...
Add another African case to the ICC's docket. The International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, has given its prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo the green light to investigate the role of senior politicians in Kenya's post-election violence that killed 1,300 Kenyans in 2008. The decision allows Mr. Ocampo to take the next step, which would be passing down indictments against senior Kenyan politicians, some...
In the long-running battle between Chevron and Ecuador over environmental damage, a federal court in New York has denied Ecuador's motion to stay arbitration of a Ecuador-U.S. BIT claim. In September 2009, Chevron filed a notice of arbitration alleging, among other things, that "Ecuador has breached ...
It is always unpleasant to get lectured by foreign governments about "violating international law", but this is something U.S. government officials should be used to. Still, it must be galling for the new U.S. administration to be lectured by Brazil's president over U.S. non-compliance with a WTO ruling on cotton subsidies. The United States must comply with a World Trade Organization...
I am delighted to announce that Luis Moreno-Ocampo has appointed my friend and colleague Tim McCormack to be the Office of the Prosecutor's Special Adviser on International Humanitarian Law. From the announcement: Professor McCormack, from the Melbourne Law School at the University of Melbourne will help the Office of the Prosecutor to develop a solid understanding of complex legal issues such...
I've heard that the docket for the European Court of Human Rights is out of control, but a backlog of 120,000* cases is a little ridiculous. There is no doubt about the seriousness of the situation in Strasbourg. Jean-Paul Costa, president of the European Court of Human Rights, has referred to it as extremely disturbing. The parliamentary assembly of the Council of...
I had almost forgotten about this ongoing dispute between Australia and Japan over whaling, which has been going on for years (and which I first noted on this blog way back in 2005). The Australian Prime Minister warned Japan yesterday that if whaling doesn't stop by November, Australia will take Japan to court, either the ICJ or the International Tribunal...
Dapo Akande, who seems to know more about head of state immunity than anyone else, has an interesting post on the recent ICC Appeals Chamber non-decision decision in the case against Sudan's President Bashir. He points out that the Appeals Chamber failed to even mention the question of head of state immunity, which is important in this case because as...
My former Pepperdine colleague, Kathryn Lee Boyd, has just filed a fascinating complaint relating to the distribution of funds secured by a treaty between the United States and Libya on behalf of U.S. victims of Libyan-sponsored terrorism. The facts as alleged in the complaint of Davé v. Crowell & Moring are complex. In brief, Libya has been implicated in terrorist...
The complex and often antagonistic interaction of hard and soft law was clearly one of the most interesting points in the book for several of the commentators, as indeed it was for us. Our core argument here is that hard and soft law can serve not just as complements but also as “antagonists,” both in a conflict-of-laws sense and in...
As its title suggests, When Cooperation Fails has two distinct aims. The specific empirical aim is to provide a definitive and theoretically informed account of one of the most bitter and politically charged international disputes of the past two decades, between the United States and the European Union over the regulation of genetically modified foods and crops. Our theoretical aim,...
