In association with the International Commission of Jurists

International Human Rights Law

06 Sep

Having followed the terrorism litigation against Iran for years, I was fascinated to read of the recent legislation—Section 502 of the Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights--that creates a legislative fix for victims of one particular group of terrorist victims but not thousands of others. The law in question grants plaintiffs/judgment creditors in one and only one case—Peterson...

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06 Sep

Just when you thought you've seen everything -- you haven't: According to a statement posted on the website of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, Judge El Hadji Malik Sow, a Senegalese jurist who served as alternate judge for Trial Chamber II, has agreed to testify in the wake of the defense appeal. A guilty verdict was handed down against Taylor last...

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05 Sep

What I said last month, about Mauritania refusing to extradite al-Senussi to Libya?  Never mind: The man accused of having helped orchestrate some of the worst crimes committed by the regime of ex-Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi has been extradited back to Libya, according to a Mauritanian government statement. The communique carried by national radio and on Mauritania's official news agency said Abdullah...

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31 Aug

A recent post at Mother Jones mentions my view of UBL's killing and provides Ken's brief thoughts on his death: Kenneth Anderson, a law professor at American University Washington School of Law, disagrees. "Being wounded does not necessarily render one hors de combat; hors de combat means they’re not actually posing a threat to you," Anderson says, citing moments where wounded...

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29 Aug

Of the 1500+ posts I've written for Opinio Juris over the past seven years, none angered my fellow progressives more than the post in which I claimed that the killing of Usama bin Laden was perfectly legal under international law.  Here is what I wrote: To begin with, I think the applicable legal regime is international humanitarian law (IHL), not international...

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24 Aug

South Africa recently decided that, in order to avoid consumer confusion, goods imported from the Occupied Palestinian Territories must include special labels that make clear they were not produced in Israel.  Israel's outrage was predictable -- but its rhetoric was anything but: The Israeli Foreign Ministry said it would summon South Africa's ambassador to lodge a protest over the decision on...

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22 Aug

Mark Klamberg, who is a lecturer in public international law at the University of Stockholm, has a detailed post on his personal blog about the likelihood -- or unlikelihood, to be more precise -- that Sweden would extradite Julian Assange to the United States.  He has kindly given me permission to reprint a significant portion of it (I've made minor...

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20 Aug

Fresh off the failure of the Arms Trade Treaty -- aka The UN's Secret Plan to Disarm the Defenders of Freedom and Enslave Mankind -- Google has released an amazing new tool that maps global flows of light weapons and ammunition.  Here is how the Huffington Post describes the tool: The Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), a Norwegian initiative focused on...

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19 Aug

A friend of mine asked me that question the other day.  Imagine that a non-state actor (NSA) had both a legislative branch that enacted criminal laws and a functioning criminal-justice system that prosecuted violations of those laws.  Could the NSA challenge the admissibility of a case pending at the ICC on the ground that it was already investigating or prosecuting...

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17 Aug

For the love of God, is it really too much to ask for reporters to do five minutes of research before they write about international law?  See if you can spot the mistake in this article about Britain's silly threat to invade the Ecuadorian embassy to arrest Julian Assange: Ecuador has said it may appeal to the International Criminal Court (ICC)...

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13 Aug

As I noted last week, I have just finished a long chapter critically assessing the work of the Human Rights Council-created International Commission of Inquiry on Libya (COI).  My basic conclusion is that although the COI generally did an excellent job, particularly in terms of its fact-finding methodology, it seems clear that it was less interested in holding the rebels...

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