Now that I've had a chance to read through the ICJ's advisory opinion, following are a few initial reactions. (I will consider the separate opinions in another post.) Marko Milanovic has done a great job parsing the main issues that were at bar, namely 1. Whether the ICJ should exercise advisory jurisdiction in this case; 2. How broadly or narrowly the question posed by...
Two items worth noting. First, as Julian pointed out the other day, Moreno-Ocampo's refusal to comply with the Trial Chamber's order to disclose the identity of an intermediary to Lubanga's defense team has led the Trial Chamber to order Lubanga's release pending appeal. (The OTP filed the appeal today). It is bad enough that the "independent statutory obligation" to protect...
Greg McNeal has passed along the sad news that Charles Gittings, a long-time commenter on Opinio Juris, has passed away at an untimely 57. Here is a snippet from his obituary in the Los Angeles Times: Though not a lawyer, Gittings had a life-long interest in military tactics and law that led him to become an invaluable resource to some...
As I predicted, the Pre-Trial Chamber has approved genocide charges for Bashir: The International Criminal Court has issued a second arrest warrant for Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir - this time for charges of genocide. He already faces charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, which he denies. The ICC first indicted him in March 2009 but he has not...
As I noted in my previous post, the OTP argued that it had an "independent statutory obligation" to protect witnesses that permitted it to ignore the Trial Chamber's order to reveal the intermediary's identity to the defense. The Trial Chamber rejected that claim, and rightfully so. There is no such obligation -- or, perhaps more precisely, there is no such...
I don't make that claim lightly. Despite my belief that Moreno-Ocampo has been a disaster as a prosecutor, I have consistently opposed calls for his removal, whether because of his retaliation against an employee for accusing him of sexual harassment or because he decided to pursue genocide charges against Bashir. I even opposed his ouster when his misuse of confidentiality...
I hope I'm not stepping on the toes of my Wronging Rights friends, but I couldn't ignore why Linsdey Lohan thinks she doesn't deserve to be sent to jail for 90 days for violating her probation: It is clearly stated in Article 5 of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights that...
I discovered the error this morning, as I was re-reading the Appeals Chamber decision for the joint criminal enterprise section of my book on the Nuremberg Military Tribunals. The decision cites Einsatzgruppen as an example of JCE I, "basic" joint criminal enterprise, and then attributes the following quote to the Einsatzgruppen tribunal (para. 200): the elementary principle must be borne in...
Not according to Yaacov Lozowick, an Israeli historian: Here's my input, on a point no-one else seems to be noticing: There was no Nazi invasion of the Sudetenland, no invasion of Slovakia, hardly one of Austria and even less of Bohemia. Nazi Germany brutally invaded many countries, but those weren't among them. Go check the history books and...
That’s a remarkable statement, but it actually is true. Yesterday the Supreme Court in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project addressed the question of whether a federal statute criminalizing the provision of “material support” to terrorist organizations was constitutional. A humanitarian NGO group wanted to train members of two terrorist organizations, the PKK and the LTTE, to become more...
Dapo Akande has an important post today at EJIL: Talk! that asks, as he puts it, "what exactly was agreed in Kampala on the crime of aggression?" I think this paragraph is particularly important: The opt out provision is the most confusing aspect of the aggression amendments. Who exactly is required to opt out? Once the requisite number of...
The following is a guest post by Scott Paul, the Making Amends Campaign Fellow with the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict. I'm delighted to welcome Scott to OJ; in his previous life, he was was one of my favorite bloggers -- a regular contributor to The Washington Note and Bolton Watch. Mohammad was approaching a checkpoint with his brother...
