I am very grateful for the opportunity to discuss my book on EJIL: Talk! and Opinio Juris, as am I grateful to the commentators on both blogs for taking the time to read and discuss it. In this introductory post I’ll try to outline the book’s main arguments and themes and my approach generally in analysing a very complex topic. The...
It's official -- or almost is, to be completely accurate. Mark Kersten first reported the news at Justice in Conflict, and a Reuters story has now confirmed it. On December 12, Fatou Bensouda will become the next ICC Prosecutor: An informal meeting of ICC members will be held in New York on Thursday to discuss the appointment, said Liechtenstein's U.N....
The High Court of Kenya has held that the government has an obligation to arrest Bashir if he sets foot on Kenyan territory: The Kenyan High Court ruling was the result of a case that the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) brought against Kenya's attorney general and internal security minster in 2010. "The courts have said that Kenya has an...
Dapo Akande has a typically excellent discussion of the surrender issue today at EJIL: Talk!, in which he agrees with Jens Ohlin and disagrees with me. In his view, Libya is entitled to challenge the admissibility of the case against Saif without having to first surrender him to the ICC. I find much of Dapo's argument convincing, but I am...
My friend and PhD supervisor Carsten Stahn has posted a very interesting discussion of Libya and the ICC at the Hague Justice Portal. Here is a taste: One possible option to reconcile domestic jurisdiction with accountability before the ICC may be a division of labor based on temporal jurisdiction. In line with the Council referral, the ICC enjoys ...
I've made more than my share of mistakes in my six years of blogging. It's painful and embarrassing, but it happens. All you can do is admit your mistakes and move on. Unfortunately, that is not the approach taken by the author of the terrible Mother Jones article I discussed yesterday. Suebsaeng doesn't believe that he made any mistakes. On the...
Lord knows I can't stand Mitt Romney. And I have never bought the idea that Ahmadinejad has committed direct and public incitement of genocide through his inflammatory anti-Israel rhetoric. But this Mother Jones article is still staggeringly awful: When asked about Iran and Israel at Tuesday's CNN national security debate, on-and-off Republican front-runner Mitt Romney replied in his typically tough, ...
Most commentators have assumed -- Julian included -- that Libya has an obligation under the Rome Statute to surrender Saif Gaddafi to the ICC before it can challenge the admissibility of the case against him. At The Multilateralist today, David Bosco quotes a UN diplomat who believes that Libya can challenge admissibility without first surrendering Saif: [Y]esterday, an extremely well informed...
Suzanne Nossel, who was until recently a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations and is currently a Visiting Senior Fellow for Global Governance at the Council of Foreign Relations, has been named the new Executive Director of Amnesty International USA. (I should note that Suzanne is an old friend.) Here's part of what the Amnesty press release said: Most...
According to AFP, the ICTY has issued an "arrest warrant" for Florence Hartmann for failing to pay the fine she received for her 2009 contempt conviction: The UN Yugoslav war crimes court issued an arrest warrant Wednesday against a former spokeswoman for the tribunal's chief prosecutor for refusing to pay a 7,000-euro ($10,000) fine. Florence Hartmann, a French national, was...
Readers know all too well where my sympathies lie regarding WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. But I have to admit, I'm baffled by the paranoid reaction my fellow WikiSupporters are exhibiting in the wake of Assange's latest failure to block his extradition to Sweden to face sexual-assault charges. Exhibit A, from the usually invaluable WL Central: The possibility of criminal charges against...
As readers may know, Israel's Knesset is currently considering two laws designed to prevent foreign governments and international organizations from funding progressive Israel human-rights groups: one that drastically limits the amount of funding such groups could receive, and one that imposes a tax of nearly 50% on foreign funds received by human-rights groups that do not receive Israeli funding (i.e.,...
