I've been following the Kenyan confirmation hearing relatively closely, and I've continually found the reporting at allAfrica.com -- which aggregates articles from numerous leading African newspapers -- to provide extremely good coverage of the proceedings. An article today from the Nairobi Star, however, caught my eye for all the wrong reasons (my emphasis): A dissenting judge of the International Criminal Court...
I want to call readers' attention to a very interesting new essay by Milan Markovic, forthcoming in the Texas International Law Journal, that urges the ICC to adopt a code of conduct for prosecutors in the OTP. Here is the abstract: A largely unexamined area of law is the intersection between legal ethics and international criminal law. This...
Following Talisman Energy, the Fourth Circuit has now held in Aziz v. Alcolac, another ATS case, that the mens rea of aiding and abetting under the "law of nations" is intent, not knowledge. That's plainly wrong, as I have pointed out before, so there is no point dwelling on the new decision. But this paragraph deserves specific mention, because it...
[Ed. note: David Caron is the C. William Maxeiner Distinguished Professor of Law at the UC Berkeley School of Law and the President of the American Society of International Law. This post is also published in the ASIL Newsletter.] The continuing influence (the “tail”) of historic events such as 9/11 has numerous dimensions. In international law, the event and the responses...
Philip Alston has posted an important new essay on targeted killing on SSRN. Here is the abstract of the essay, which is forthcoming in the Harvard National Security Journal: This Article focuses on the accountability of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in relation to targeted killings, under both United States law and international law. As the CIA, often...
I don't know very much about the individual prosecutors, but the lineup doesn't exactly strike me as indicative of an anti-African, neo-colonialist international organization: Ms Adesola Adeboyejo is to handle the Muthaura hearings for the Office of the Prosecutor. Adeboyejo has worked at the International Criminal Court for Rwanda (ICTR) as a prosecutor and handled the case against Pauline Nyiramasukuko...
One of the most remarkable aspects of how conservative U.S. scholars approach international law is their absolute certainty that the American position on extraordinarily difficult issues is always correct. Consider, for example, Jack Goldsmith's articulation today of when the UN Charter permits the U.S. to use force in self-defense against non-state actors: If the president is authorized to use force against...
Peter Margulies (Roger Williams) responded to my blogging about criminal membership and al-Bahlul at Lawfare. I wrote a response, which Lawfare's Bobby Chesney was kind enough to post for me. Instead of reposting the lengthy exchange here, interested readers should check out the posts at Lawfare. You can find Peter's original post here, and my response here. Feel free to...
Like Julian, I can't find the text of a "report" per se, but I did find this on the Human Rights Council's website: GENEVA (13 September 2011) – Commenting on the report of the Panel of Inquiry on the flotilla incident of 31 May (Palmer Report), released this month, a group of United Nations independent experts* criticized its...
Well, the Center for Constitutional Rights certainly thinks so Human rights lawyers and victims of clergy sexual abuse filed a complaint on Tuesday urging the International Criminal Court in The Hague to investigate and prosecute Pope Benedict XVI and three top Vatican officials for crimes against humanity for what they described as abetting and covering up the rape and sexual assault...
I will delay any detailed response to Kevin’s typically insightful posts about the CMCR’s recent decision, particularly its conclusion of a “substantial showing” that conspiracy to violate the laws of war is “an offense against the law of armed conflict.” For now, I will note that I have some similar concerns to those Kevin expressed (e.g. on the relationship or...
As I noted in my previous post, the CMCR's opinion in al-Bahlul repeatedly cites the Nuremberg-era crime of criminal membership in defense of its belief that material support for terrorism and conspiracy qualify as war crimes. I continue to believe that the best counter-arguments to that idea are (1) that criminal membership was not a war crime at Nuremberg (the...
