In association with the International Commission of Jurists

International Criminal Law

19 Aug

I have been negligent in failing to post on two excellent assessments of the recent ICC Review Conference in Kampala and its ultimate decision on aggression.  Both assessments (one by Heritage's Brett Schaefer and the other by George Mason's Jeremy Rabkin) give the Obama Administration some credit for limiting the damage to U.S. interests at Kampala.  But both ultimately conclude...

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19 Aug

Dave has kindly sent another post on piracy.  Here it is. Kevin graciously offered me the chance to respond to his contrasting reading of the logic of Judge Jackson’s decision dismissing the piracy charge. But since we both reach the same ultimate conclusion—that the correct legal definition of piracy should be that contained in the 1958 High Seas Treaty/1982 UN Convention...

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19 Aug

I have to respectfully disagree with Dave's interpretation of Judge Jackson's decision.  The decision is almost certainly incorrect from the standpoint of the law of nations; as Dave rightly points out, the definition of piracy in the High Seas Convention and in UNCLOS likely represents the customary standard.  But I think Judge Jackson's decision makes complete sense given the US's...

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17 Aug

In the first U.S. court opinion on piracy since 1820, a U.S. judge in Norfolk, Virginia has dismissed piracy charges against Somali defendants in United States v. Said. The Court held that attempted piracy is not piracy for the purposes of U.S. criminal law.  (h/t  Eugene Volokh). As I mentioned in an earlier post, the relevant U.S. statute criminalizing piracy leaves...

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16 Aug

Omar Khadr's trial began a couple of days ago at Guantanamo.  Here is what the prosecutor said in his opening statement: This trial is about holding an Al Qaeda terrorist accountable for his actions and vindicating the laws of war. Two small problems with this.  Throwing a grenade at U.S. soldiers is not an act of terrorism.  And four out...

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12 Aug

Two commenters on my previous post on Kagame's increasing authoritarianism questioned whether Rwanda arrested Peter Erlinder because of his representation of defendants at the ICTR.  Fortuitously, Kate Gibson -- my colleague on the Karadzic case and a defense attorney at the ICTR -- has just published an ASIL Insight on the arrest that supports my claim.  Here is a taste...

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11 Aug

Hell must have had central air conditioning installed, because I find myself in complete agreement with Ruth Wedgwood's recent post at EJIL: Talk! on Paul Kagame's rapid descent into authoritarianism.  Here is a snippet: The West’s failure to address Tutsi violations of the laws of war has allowed Kagame to conclude, justifiably, that he can do nearly anything with...

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09 Aug

My friend Nancy Combs new book on international tribunals, Fact-Finding Without Facts: The Uncertain Evidentiary Foundations of International Criminal Convictions, has just been published by Cambridge University Press.  Here is the description: Fact-finding Without Facts explores international criminal fact-finding - empirically, conceptually, and normatively. After reviewing thousands of pages of transcripts from various international criminal tribunals, the author...

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08 Aug

El Universal -- along with other newspapers -- is reporting that one of President Uribe's final acts in office was to file a complaint with the ICC alleging that Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela, is responsible for permitting FARC guerrillas to use Venezuela as a staging area for crimes committed in Colombia: Jaime Granados, the lawyer of Colombian outgoing president...

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04 Aug

I've argued for the past couple of years that the ICC should open a formal investigation into the situation in Colombia, because it is a non-African situation that satisfies most, if not all, of my criteria for situational gravity: (1) crimes committed with government involvement; (2) systematic criminality; (3) socially alarming crimes such as enforced disappearance and torture.  Here is...

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31 Jul

Not surprisingly, the AU has condemned the ICC's decision to issue an arrest warrant against Bashir for genocide.  Equally unsurprising, the new resolution seems to have been adopted with the same kind of back-room machinations that led to the AU's previous resolution condemning the ICC: Over the weekend, delegates from the AU countries reportedly fought a fierce battle that led...

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25 Jul

[The following is a guest-post by Lt. Col. Chris Jenks, the Chief of the International Law Branch in the Army's Office of the Judge Advocate General.  He is blogging in his personal capacity.] The day ICC supporters and detractors alike hoped would come, albeit for very different reasons, arrived on Wednesday, July 21st -- Sudanese President Omar Bashir publicly...

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