In association with the International Commission of Jurists

International Human Rights Law

05 Sep

Via BLDGBLOG and Pruned (1, 2), here are two suggestions that are not so much literal proposals but rather thought experiments, each meant to prod the viewer. (And a third one from me.) The first is one of the winners of SeaChange 2030+, an "ideas competition" sponsored by the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects with the goal of addressing the effects of...

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03 Sep

Julian noted a couple of days ago that the ACLU and Center for Constitutional Rights have challenged the Obama administration's "asserted authority to carry out ‘targeted killings’ of U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism far from any field of armed conflict.”  The lawsuit claims, inter alia, that such killings violate the due-process rights of the targeted citizens. As Anthony Romero...

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31 Aug

The Washington Post is reporting that a State Department contractor has been charged with leaking defense information to Fox News: A State Department contractor was indicted Friday by a federal grand jury in the District, becoming the latest target of a series of investigations into unauthorized government leaks to news organizations under the Obama administration. Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, 43,...

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29 Aug

Julian's latest snide swipe at the ICC focuses on Bashir's visit to Kenya, which he describes as a "slap in the face to the ICC Prosecutor and the defenders of the Bashir arrest warrant."  Not surprisingly, Julian conveniently fails to mention the details of Bashir's visit: Sudanese President Omar al Bashir curiously flew in through Nairobi’s Wilson Airport, and ...

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28 Aug

So says a draft UN report that studied events in the Congo between 1993 and 2008: An exhaustive U.N. investigation into the history of violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo has concluded that the Rwandan military and its allies carried out hundreds of large-scale killings of ethnic Hutu refugees during the 1990s that amounted to war crimes,...

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26 Aug

The report is here.  I have neither the time nor the stomach to fully engage with it, but I couldn't let paragraph 82 pass without comment: 82. The United States is currently at war with Al Qaeda and its associated forces. President Obama has made clear that the United States is fully committed to complying with the Constitution and with all...

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26 Aug

So reports Reuters: The Dutch prosecutor's office said on Friday it would look into whether Dutch peacekeeping soldiers should face criminal charges over the 1995 massacre in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica. About 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed at Srebrenica after Bosnian Serb forces overran the United Nations-protected enclave where Dutch troops were ...

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19 Aug

Dave has kindly sent another post on piracy.  Here it is. Kevin graciously offered me the chance to respond to his contrasting reading of the logic of Judge Jackson’s decision dismissing the piracy charge. But since we both reach the same ultimate conclusion—that the correct legal definition of piracy should be that contained in the 1958 High Seas Treaty/1982 UN Convention...

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19 Aug

I have to respectfully disagree with Dave's interpretation of Judge Jackson's decision.  The decision is almost certainly incorrect from the standpoint of the law of nations; as Dave rightly points out, the definition of piracy in the High Seas Convention and in UNCLOS likely represents the customary standard.  But I think Judge Jackson's decision makes complete sense given the US's...

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16 Aug

Omar Khadr's trial began a couple of days ago at Guantanamo.  Here is what the prosecutor said in his opening statement: This trial is about holding an Al Qaeda terrorist accountable for his actions and vindicating the laws of war. Two small problems with this.  Throwing a grenade at U.S. soldiers is not an act of terrorism.  And four out...

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12 Aug

Two commenters on my previous post on Kagame's increasing authoritarianism questioned whether Rwanda arrested Peter Erlinder because of his representation of defendants at the ICTR.  Fortuitously, Kate Gibson -- my colleague on the Karadzic case and a defense attorney at the ICTR -- has just published an ASIL Insight on the arrest that supports my claim.  Here is a taste...

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