One of my favorite issues of the New York Times Magazine is its "year in ideas" issue, which comes annually in December. Because OJ is a repository of things related to battlefield robotics and law and ethics, I wanted to flag for your attention the item by Dara Kerr, "Guilty Robots." [I]magine robots that obey injunctions like Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative...
B. Don Taylor, a former legal officer at the ICTY and a good friend, has argued in the comments to a recent post that although Dr. Karadzic's criticisms of the procedure the Registry used to appoint Harvey may well have merit, Dr. Karadzic's request for certification to appeal the Rule 44 issue did not adequately raise the issue. I disagree...
[This is a guest post by Professor Greg Gordon of the University of North Dakota. Professor Gordon is the Director of the UND Center for Human Rights and Genocide Studies, an expert on international criminal law and a past guest blogger at Opinio Juris.] Earlier this week, Spanish National Court Judge Balthazar Garzon initiated money laundering proceedings against the widow...
Americans who defend the legality of the invasion of Iraq almost invariably point to the fact that Britain's Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, also approved the invasion. That argument has always been questionable; rumours have long circulated that Lord Goldsmith did not believe that the invasion was legal, but was pressured by Downing Street into approving it anyway. According to an explosive...
I criticize the Registry regularly, so it's important to acknowledge when it does something right. I blogged a couple of weeks ago about the Registry's indefensible position that Dr. Karadzic's trial had not started, so the defence team was not entitled to any funding until the trial "began" in March. The Registry has now reversed its decision and approved 250...
The Nation has just published an extensive article documenting the "secret war" Blackwater employees have been conducting in Pakistan. The opening grafs: At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which...
Give the Trial Chamber credit, it has at least has stopped pretending that its decisions make any legal sense whatsoever: It said on Monday that Karadzic's appeal request was too vague and premature because at the time of his application, no counsel had been appointed to him. "Granting the application now, and then potentially again on 1 March, 2010 ...
It is becoming increasingly clear that the Registry made no attempt to comply with the Appeals Chamber's decision in Seselj. I have now learned that the Registry arranged for Dr. Karadzic to meet with five defence barristers, including Mr. Harvey. Dr. Karadzic was then given a deadline to choose one. Instead, citing Seselj, Dr. Karadzic asked for a copy of...
The ICTY has appointed Richard Harvey, a barrister with Garden Court Chambers in London, to serve as Dr. Karadzic's stand-by counsel. There is no question that Mr. Harvey is more than qualified for the position: in addition to defending a number of individuals accused of terrorism-related offences in the UK, Mr. Harvey has served as the lead counsel in one...
I am forwarding this call for papers from Tim Waters at Indiana to be presented at a forthcoming conference on the Milosevic trial. Looks like a great event. The Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Russian and East European Institute and Center for West European Studies announce a major conference in Bloomington, Indiana on February 18-21, 2010. The conference...
The following is a guest post by Lt. Col. Chris Jenks, the Chief of the International Law Branch in the Office of the Judge Advocate General. Lt. Col. Jenks is posting in his personal capacity. A Canadian Court recently sentenced Désiré Munyaneza, a former Rwandan Army officer, to life imprisonment with eligibility for parole following his conviction in May for...
Both Martin Holterman and Sasha Greenawalt have questioned my repeated -- and quite deliberate -- insistence that "no competent barrister will accept appointment as stand-by counsel under these circumstances," and that any barrister who does accept the appointment will thus "be interested in one thing and one thing only: the free publicity that comes with it." Martin's comment is the...
