In association with the International Commission of Jurists

International Criminal Law

08 Mar

Scott Peterson has a fantastic timeline at the Christian Science Monitor that catalogs all the times Western countries have predicted Iran's imminent entry into the nuclear club.  Some highlights: 1984: Soon after West German engineers visit the unfinished Bushehr nuclear reactor, Jane's Defence Weekly quotes West German intelligence sources saying that Iran's production of a bomb "is entering its...

|
07 Mar

I am teaching IHL in Jericho this week, so I don't have as much time as I'd like to weigh in on the increasingly surreal debate over whether the right of self-defense in Article 51 of the UN Charter permits the U.S. or Israel to attack a country that does not have nuclear weapons, could not build a nuclear weapon...

|
05 Mar

I expect the legal issues arising out of a possible attack on Iran's nuclear facilities are going to get hotter in the coming weeks. Peter Berkowitz of the Hoover Institution offers this argument in favor of the legality of Israel's attack drawing from the doctrine of "preemptive" self defense (h/t Jack Goldsmith at Lawfare). The charter of the United Nations affirms...

|
02 Mar

Like many readers, I never miss FP's online "Morning Brief," which provides links to numerous interesting international developments.  It's an incredibly useful and erudite feature -- which is why I was so surprised to see the following headline this morning: A U.S. court dismissed charges against the president of Sri Lanka for war crimes. Um, no.  The case did not involve war...

|
29 Feb

It is my pleasure to announce that the Journal of International Criminal Justice, the leading journal in the field, has just published a special issue on the crime of aggression to commemorate its 10th anniversary.  The special issue, which is edited by Claus Kreß and Philippa Webb, contains a variety of fascinating articles on aggression from a number of leading...

|
27 Feb

It won't save his job, for reasons Julian mentioned a week or so ago, but it's still good news: Spain's top court acquitted renowned judge Baltasar Garzon on Monday of abuse of power by trying to investigate Franco-era atrocities, in a case that exposed deep wounds dating back to the civil war. Six members of the seven-strong Supreme Court...

|
26 Feb

The blog is run (so far, solely) by Sonia Cardenas, the Charles A. Dana Research Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Human Rights Program at Trinity College in Hartford, CT.  Here is her description of the blog: This site explores universal jurisdiction, through the prism of politics and human rights.  Universal jurisdiction is the revolutionary idea that...

|
26 Feb

Over at Lawfare last Friday, Bobby Chesney commented on a NY Times article reporting that military commission charges have been initiated against Ali Musa Daqduq. Chesney describes Daqduq as “a Hezbollah member involved in an attack on American forces in Iraq in which the attackers disguised themselves as American soldiers and Iraqi police and in which several captured American...

|
23 Feb

Readers interested in watching Ben Wittes desperately try to spin British condemnation of the U.S. approach to the war on terror need only check out his post today on Rahmatullah.  As I discussed a couple of months ago, the British Court of Appeals held that Rahmatullah was entitled to be released from U.S. custody because the U.S. had rendered him...

|
12 Feb

My friend Dapo Akande takes me to task today at EJIL: Talk! for my position on drone strikes directed at combatants attending a funeral or helping the wounded.  I will address his curious reluctance to address the text of the Rome Statute in Part II of my response; in this post, I want to address his arguments concerning IHL.  Here...

|
11 Feb

That's the conclusion drawn in this blockbuster report -- which, precisely because it is a blockbuster that makes Israel and the MEK's vast number of Democratic and Republican supporters in the U.S. look bad, has been basically ignored in the "liberal" media: Deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists are being carried out by an Iranian dissident group that is financed,...

|
10 Feb

The case involves Luis Moreno-Ocampo's decision to remove Ekkehard Witkopf, then a Senior Trial Lawyer with the OTP, from Lubanga.  The following paragraphs from the ILO's judgment best summarize what happened: On 15 December 2008 the Deputy Prosecutor informed  the  complainant orally that the Executive Committee had decided that he would no longer lead the trial of the Lubanga case on...

|