In association with the International Commission of Jurists

International Criminal Law

23 Nov

In my prior post, I suggested that the standards for aiding and abetting liability and corporate liability that emerge (or don’t emerge) out of the jurisprudence of international criminal courts are best understood not as customary international law, but instead, as a form of international criminal common law.  One initial reaction to this argument might be if these rules aren’t...

|
23 Nov

Most commentators have assumed -- Julian included -- that Libya has an obligation under the Rome Statute to surrender Saif Gaddafi to the ICC before it can challenge the admissibility of the case against him.  At The Multilateralist today, David Bosco quotes a UN diplomat who believes that Libya can challenge admissibility without first surrendering Saif: [Y]esterday, an extremely well informed...

|
20 Nov

Reports are a little uncertain, but it sounds like Libya will not comply with the ICC Prosecutors' arrest warrant and turn over Muammar Qaddafi's son Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi. ZINTAN, Libya (AP) – Libya's new leaders said Sunday they will try Moammar Gadhafi's son at home and not hand him over to the International Criminal Court where he's charged with crimes against humanity. The government...

|
17 Nov

According to AFP, the ICTY has issued an "arrest warrant" for Florence Hartmann for failing to pay the fine she received for her 2009 contempt conviction: The UN Yugoslav war crimes court issued an arrest warrant Wednesday against a former spokeswoman for the tribunal's chief prosecutor for refusing to pay a 7,000-euro ($10,000) fine. Florence Hartmann, a French national, was...

|
13 Nov

Readers know all too well where my sympathies lie regarding WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.  But I have to admit, I'm baffled by the paranoid reaction my fellow WikiSupporters are exhibiting in the wake of Assange's latest failure to block his extradition to Sweden to face sexual-assault charges.  Exhibit A, from the usually invaluable WL Central: The possibility of criminal charges against...

|
10 Nov

[Robert E. Williams, Jr. is an associate professor of political science at Pepperdine University and an expert on corruption in Equatorial Guinea]. The other shoe has dropped in the U.S. Government’s corruption case against Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue. Last week, a civil forfeiture complaint was unsealed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California as a second...

|
10 Nov

The Naval War College has published the latest volume in its Blue Book series.  Here is the description and information about how to obtain it (although you can simply get the PDF here): The Naval War College International Law Department recently published volume 87 of its International Law Studies "Blue Book"  series.  The Blue Book has served as...

|
07 Nov

That was the candid assessment of outgoing ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo at the recent ASIL Midyear meeting held at UCLA this past weekend. In a free-flowing and unusually frank discussion of the International Criminal Court to a packed assembly, Moreno-Ocampo admitted that there is "one standard for 119 member states, and another standard for every other country." He...

|
07 Nov

Tonight's episode of The Good Wife featured a Muslim-American man -- a former Army translator in Afghanistan -- who sues the U.S. government for torture and ends up being accused of supporting al-Qaeda.  It was quite a fascinating episode; it's not everyday that a mainstream television show is built around Executive Order 13324, which blocks property and prohibits transactions with...

|
04 Nov

My thanks to Dave Glazier, Detlev Vagts, Roger Clark, and Devin Pendas for their insightful comments on my book.  At the risk of sounding like I’ve plagiarized my response at EJIL: Talk!, I find it difficult to respond to those comments, because I almost completely agree with them.  But I’ll give it a shot… Glazier My basic response to...

|
31 Oct

Opinio Juris and EJIL: Talk! are happy to announce that we will be hosting two joint book discussions. The first book is OJ's own Kevin Heller's The Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Origins of International Criminal Law (Oxford UP). That discussion starts today. We have a fantastic lineup of discussants, to whom we are most grateful for their time...

|