In association with the International Commission of Jurists

International Human Rights Law

03 Apr

President Obama is set to give a speech later today criticizing Paul Ryan's budget plan.  That's all well and good -- the plan is a study in right-wing extremism.  But one of Obama's historical references is more than a little problematic.  From his prepared remarks (my emphasis): "In this country, broad-based prosperity has never trickled-down from the success of a...

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02 Apr

Here is an excerpt from my report on the Chevron-Ecuador Panel at this year's ASIL meetings, published over at ASILcables.org: In my view, the best way to understand Chevron v. Ecuador is as a marriage gone horribly wrong, where, as usual, the children are the biggest losers.  In this case, the “children” are theLago Agrio plaintiffs, most of whom are part...

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01 Apr

I think it's safe to say that the ECCC is in serious trouble, despite having an excellent International Co-Prosecutor in Andrew Cayley and many intelligent, dedicated staff.  As readers probably know, the international reserve co-investigating judge, Laurent Kasper-Ansermet, is resigning his position because interference by the Cambodian government is making it impossible for the Tribunal to investigate new cases.  Kasper-Ansermet...

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30 Mar

[Harold Hongju Koh is the Legal Adviser, U.S. Department of State.] Statement Regarding Syria Harold Hongju Koh Legal Adviser, U.S. Department of State American Society of International Law Annual Meeting March 30, 2012 It is my honor to speak here again at the annual meeting of the American Society of International Law. A year ago, I spoke before this audience about...

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29 Mar

Dawood Ismail Ahmed, a Pakistani lawyer and JSD candidate at the University of Chicago, has a very interesting article today at Foreign Policy on Pakistan's opposition to drone strikes.  He argues that if Pakistan really wants to put an end to the strikes, which have killed hundreds of innocent Pakistani civilians, it needs to start taking advantage of its options...

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29 Mar

Over at EJIL Talk!, Professors Joanna Harrington and Rene Provost note the passage of what Provost has dubbed "Canada's Alien Tort Statute." As for the details, the new Canadian law will now allow Canadian citizens and permanent residents of Canada who are victims of terrorism, as well as others if the action has a real and substantial connection to Canada, to...

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28 Mar

I am not going to respond in depth to Professor Cassel's recent post on Chevron's responsibility for the "rainforest Chernobyl" caused by its predecessor's dumping of million gallons of crude oil and billion gallons of toxic waste into the Ecuadorian rainforest.  The plaintiffs' attorneys have prepared a lengthy and thoroughly footnoted reply to his open letter; interested readers can find...

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27 Mar

[Doug Cassel is Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School] Heller’s reply misses the point of my post, Suing Chevron in Ecuador: Do the Ends Justify the Means? I did not ask whether Chevron is an “innocent victim.” I asked whether the ends pursued by plaintiffs’ lawyers (environmental remediation) justify their means (making covert payments to the court’s “independent” expert from their “secret account,” writing his report and then lying about it, meeting secretly with the judge in an abandoned warehouse, etc.). I answered, “No.” Human rights lawyers cannot vindicate rights by trashing the rights to due process and fair trial. Doing so undermines our moral and professional credibility. I hold that view as a career human rights lawyer, not (in Heller’s ad hominem) as an “advocate for Chevron.” My post linked to my longer open letter, which made explicit that I billed Chevron for representing it on an amicus brief, but not for the time entailed in writing the open letter. Heller’s “other side of Chevron” consists of a series of erroneous, tendentious or unsupported accusations, based almost entirely on press statements by plaintiffs’ PR operatives. In the order he raises them:
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26 Mar

Lawfare has published a very interesting guest post by Haridimos Thravalos on whether conspiracy is a war crime.  The whole thing is worth a read; here is the intro: In June 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down President George W. Bush’s use of military commissions to try suspected members of al-Qaeda in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U.S. 557...

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26 Mar

I returned ten days ago from a week of teaching international humanitarian law in Jericho. It was my first time in the West Bank, and I won't soon forget it. I was particularly struck, not surprisingly, by the limitations on Palestinian life and movement -- the endless checkpoints, the hideous wall, the massive illegal settlements dotting the landscape....

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22 Mar

I found much to like and dislike in this essay by Nigerian-American writer Teju Cole discussing his widely shared tweets on the Invisible Children Kony 2012 video. Here is one: Teju Cole@tejucole 1- From Sachs to Kristof to Invisible Children to TED, the fastest growth industry in the US is the White Savior Industrial Complex. Cole goes on to observe (rightly in my...

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