According to a press release today, the OTP is conducting a preliminary examination into whether two recent North Korean attacks on South Korea qualify as war crimes: The shelling of Yeonpyeong Island on the 23 November 2010 which resulted in the killing of South Korean marines and civilians and the injury of many others; and The sinking of a South...
The following is a guest post by Anna Dolidze, a JSD candidate at Cornell Law School. In 2007-08, Dolidze was an Albert Podell Global Scholar at Risk at New York University Law School and a Visiting Fellow at Columbia University's Harriman Institute. She has worked for a number of international organizations, including for Save the Children, Russian...
As one of WikiLeaks' defenders, I feel obligated to respond to Roger's post. I have two major disagreements with it. First, I think it significantly overstates the harm caused by WikiLeaks, although it would be equally erroneous to claim that WikiLeaks has caused no harm whatsoever. Second -- and perhaps more important -- it completely ignores the the benefits of...
The following is a guest-post by Steve Vladeck, Professor of Law at American University. Our thanks to him for contributing it. The Espionage Act, the Documents/Information Distinction, and the Press I’ve been following (with great interest) the exchange between Roger, Kevin, and those who have commented on their posts concerning Julian Assange, the Espionage Act, and the broader question of...
I had a colleague ask an interesting question, "If Julian Assange is indicted and detained in London, would the U.S.-U.K. extradition treaty authorize extradition to the United States?" There's not an easy answer. The U.S.-U.K. Extradition Treaty requires "double-criminality"--the offense must be punishable in both States. Not surprisingly, the United Kingdom imposes criminal penalties for disclosing state...
I am delighted to announce that Stanford University Press has now published The Handbook of Comparative Criminal Law, which I edited with the University of Toronto's Markus Dubber. The book contains chapters on the substantive criminal law of 16 different countries, including some on which there has been little English-language scholarship, such as Iran, Egypt, China, and Argentina. ...
This is how real conservatives roll -- not the faux American kind, who believe that waterboarding is wrong only when someone else is doing it: It is not yet clear whether George W Bush is planning to cross the Atlantic to flog us his memoirs, but if I were his PR people I would urge caution. As ...
I don't have time to respond to the Ghailani verdict, which Julian notes below. I would simply direct readers to Ben Wittes' superb post at Lawfare, in which he criticizes those who view the verdict as a vindication of the military commissions. Here's a snippet: Second, it really is not clear that prosecutors would have fared better in a military...
While doing research for an essay on sentencing and the rights of defendants in international criminal law -- my contribution to the international law/Islamic law conference to which I'm now heading -- I stumbled across an exceptional essay by Shahram Dama, a professor at John Marshall Law School. Here is the abstract: Although ranking among the most fundamental principles of criminal...
A couple of weeks ago, New Stream Dream accused me of never believing individuals who -- like Khadr and Lynne Stewart -- confess to committing crimes. Well, I believe this confession: In his book, titled "Decision Points," Bush recounts being asked by the CIA whether it could proceed with waterboarding Mohammed, who Bush said was suspected of knowing about...
The following is a guest post by David Glazier, an Associate Professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. As Opinio Juris readers likely recall, there are two ongoing federal prosecutions in Norfolk, Virginia before different judges of Somali pirates who made the boneheaded mistakes of attempting attacks on two separate U.S. Navy warships. (Hey, it was dark!) In the first...
At least the war criminal lost: The basic facts are undisputed: on 15 April 2004 Ilario Pantano, then a second lieutenant with the US marines, stopped and detained two Iraqi men in a car near Falluja. The Iraqis were unarmed and the car found to be empty of weapons. Pantano ordered the two men to search the car...
