A group of distinguished Nuremberg scholars, including myself (minus the distinguished part), have filed an amicus brief in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum on behalf of the petitioners. The brief argues that although the Nuremberg trials themselves did not involve the prosecution of juridical persons such as corporations, a wide variety of Allied actions outside of judicial fora indicate that...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=x_tmig8PxAw...
My friends at Leiden -- my alma mater -- have asked me to post the following call for papers: Call for Papers for the Jus Post Bellum Project Launch Conference The Jus Post Bellum Project at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies at Leiden University has issued a call for papers for the Project's launch conference. The conference, entitled "'Jus-Post-Bellum': Mapping the...
The Court of Appeal judgment orders the UK government to seek the release of Yunus Rahmatullah, an alleged member of Lashkar-e-Taiba who has been detained at Bagram since 2004, from U.S. custody. What is particularly interesting about the decision is that it directly -- though implicitly -- rejects a little-known memo written by Jack Goldsmith while he was at the...
Ashley Deeks, a fellow at Columbia and a former member of the Office of the Legal Adviser, has posted an essay on SSRN -- forthcoming in the Virginia Journal of International Law -- entitled "Unwilling or Unable: Toward an Normative Framework for Extra-Territorial Self-Defense." Here is the abstract: Non-state actors, including terrorist groups, regularly launch attacks against states, often...
That's the question that a Ninth Circuit en banc panel heard yesterday in Movesian v. Versicherung AG. There is no statute, treaty or executive order refusing to recognize the Armenian Genocide, but there have been equivocal statements by various Presidents on the subject and failed attempts to adopt congressional resolutions recognizing the Armenian genocide. Is that enough to...
Nobel Peace Prize Laureates Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee, and Tawakkol Karman delivered their Nobel Lectures today in Oslo. It was a great day of celebration for the cause of gender equality and democracy. You should read all three lectures in their entirety to give you the full picture of what transpired. The common theme was the power of...
[Shana Tabak is a Visiting Associate Professor of Clinical Law at The George Washington University Law School, where she is also a Friedman Fellow with the International Human Rights Clinic.] Although the field of transitional justice has made great strides in addressing harms perpetrated against women in the aftermath of conflict, this paper argues that transitional justice mechanisms mistakenly rely on...
This is the first project in a new partnership between the NYU Journal of International Law & Politics and Opinio Juris. This series of postings will feature reactions from leading scholars to our three forthcoming articles to be published in 44:1. The editorial board of the Journal would like to thank Opinio Juris and Professor Peggy McGuinness, as...
That's the question asked by my friends at Wronging Rights, in response to a recent article in Time: TIME claims to have obtained an internal ICC memo showing that the Court is "compiling evidence of possible recent war crimes in southern Sudan, allegedly directed by Sudanese Defense Minister Abdelrahim Mohamed Hussein." Apparently, in addition to the Prosecutor's request...
I am very grateful to Kal Raustiala, Peggy McGuinness, Austen Parrish and Sarah Cleveland for taking the time to read my book – and I’m even happier that they liked it. They each make a number of important points, and I’ll now take the opportunity to respond to some of them. Kal is right in saying that one of my goals...
Louis Henkin Professor of Human and Constitutional Rights, Columbia Law School. From 2009-2011, the author served as Counselor on International Law to the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State. The views expressed here are personal and do not purport to reflect the views of the U.S. government. The period since September 11, 2001 has seen significantly heightened interest in...
