I'll have much to say about various legal aspects of the Lubanga judgment in the days to come, but I wanted to start by discussing the relatively narrow -- though critically important -- point that Jens addressed in his post: the dispute between the majority and Judge Fulford concerning the correct interpretation of co-perpetration in Article 25(3)(a) of the Rome...
From AllAfrica.com: Today, International Criminal Court (ICC) judges in The Hague delivered the Court's first verdict—a finding of guilt against former Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga. Prosecutors accused Lubanga of the war crimes of conscripting, enlisting, and using children under the age of 15 years for combat purposes while he served as political head of the Union of Congolese...
Professor Wilde’s comments are, as always, most thoughtful. If I understand the thrust of his post correctly, Professor Wilde is concerned that if I am to present a theory built on universal values, then I should examine carefully if the values I identify are indeed universal and if other important values are left out. In particular, Professor Wilde...
I am glad that there is very little distance between me and Professor Ku. We both agree that legal theory does not have to be predictive to be successful. In this regard, Professor Ku finds my theory compelling “as a matter of politics and policy.” Professor Ku implies, however, that may have set too low a bar in attempting...
Professor Ku’s review of When International Law Works is most insightful. I thank him for it. His “short bloggish description” of its thesis is as clear a summary of my book as I’ve been able to muster in two sentences. I confess I will probably appropriate it when I present the book at Temple Law School later this week. Professor...
In a previous post, I noted that Peter Berkowitz defended the legality of a U.S. or Israeli attack on Iran's non-existent nuclear weapons program by invoking U.S. practice -- and only U.S. practice. He now has offered another defense of such an attack in response to an editorial by Bruce Ackerman in the L.A Times. Unfortunately, Berkowitz's second article is...
Americans are furious. Officials are out of touch with the rest of us. If we thought about it, we should be angry that officials do not take international law more seriously. That is just another way that the people we send to Washington do not understand what we really need. American workers whose retirement funds hold GM stock should want to...
[John Knox is Professor of Law at Wake Forest Law School] The Supreme Court’s decision to send Kiobel back for reargument on whether the Alien Tort Statute allows courts to recognize a cause of action for violations of the law of nations in foreign territory will focus attention on the presumption against extraterritoriality, as Anthony Colangelo pointed out in his recent...
Scott Peterson has a fantastic timeline at the Christian Science Monitor that catalogs all the times Western countries have predicted Iran's imminent entry into the nuclear club. Some highlights: 1984: Soon after West German engineers visit the unfinished Bushehr nuclear reactor, Jane's Defence Weekly quotes West German intelligence sources saying that Iran's production of a bomb "is entering its...
I am teaching IHL in Jericho this week, so I don't have as much time as I'd like to weigh in on the increasingly surreal debate over whether the right of self-defense in Article 51 of the UN Charter permits the U.S. or Israel to attack a country that does not have nuclear weapons, could not build a nuclear weapon...
[Donald "Trey" Childress is Associate Professor of Law at Pepperdine Law School.] Let me begin by thanking my dear friend Roger Alford for inviting me to post on Opinio Juris. As Roger noted here Chris Whytock, Mike Ramsey, and I co-hosted a symposium on Human Rights Litigation in State Courts and Under State Law at UC-Irvine last Friday, March...
Kudos to Chris Whytock for a wonderful conference yesterday at UC Irvine addressing the topic of human rights litigation in state courts and under state law. The timing of the conference could not have been better, coming on the heels of the Kiobel oral argument on Tuesday, in which the principal defense of Kathleen Sullivan was that corporations should...
