In association with the International Commission of Jurists

International Human Rights Law

29 Aug

The WSJ has a news story (Nathan Koppel, "Arcane Law Brings Conflicts From Overseas to U.S. Courts," Thursday, August 27, 2009) on the rise of ATS suits against corporate defendants. It quotes Curt Bradley, but interestingly (I thought, for an area traditionally dominated by academics), it has more quotes from practicing lawyers, including John Bellinger, Center for Constitutional Rights's Katherine Gallagher,...

|
27 Aug

My friend and former colleague at Auckland, Mohsen Al Attar, has posted two new articles about TWAIL on SSRN.  The first, co-written with Rosalie Moore, is entitled "TWAIL Revisited - The Bolivarian Reconstruction of International Law."  The second, co-written with Vernon Ivan Tava, is entitled "TWAIL Pedagogy - Legal Education for Emancipation." The abstracts are after the jump.  I highly recommend...

|
26 Aug

One of my favorite ICL scholars, Guenael Mettraux, recommends precisely that in a recent New York Times op-ed.  Here is the core of his pitch: The Guantánamo detainees pose a similar conundrum today. Trying these men stateside would necessarily require the compromise of long-cherished principles of American law. Yet continuing to hold them without the prospect of a fair trial or...

|
23 Aug

Ruth Wedgwood comments at Forbes magazine website on the "compassionate" release of Al-Megrahi from prison in Scotland.  I agree overall with Ruth: Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, is now a free man. He was convicted in the specially created Hague trial court by a panel of Scottish judges, and his appeal was rejected by the Scottish appellate chamber. He remained in prison...

|
20 Aug

I want to offer a few thoughts on Dean Edley's email, which I appreciate Deb posting.  I am much less impressed by his reasoning than Deb appears to be.  (And please, Deb, correct me if I am wrong about that.) At the outset, it is important to note that I think Dean Edley's conclusion -- that Yoo cannot be fired, at...

|
20 Aug

Cross-Posted at Balkinization Following my testimony last month to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security on military commissions and the like, Senator Kyl (R-AZ) was kind enough to send along some follow-up questions to answer. His first follow-up question was one of the same as one he’d posed in the hearing itself: What if any empirical...

|
10 Aug

Baitullah Mehsud, the Taliban commander who orchestrated, among many other things, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and many other atrocities, is dead.  The initial, somewhat confused reports expressed some doubts, but experts are gradually concluding that a US Predator missile strike killed him. At the strategic level, this is one area in which the US is having success.  One can find...

|
10 Aug

There has been a very interesting -- and potentially very troubling -- development in the Lubanga trial.  In response to a submission by representatives for the victims and over a strong dissent by Judge Fulford, the majority of Trial Chamber I has given notice to the parties and participants in the trial "that the legal characterisation of the facts may...

|
05 Aug

Marc Ambinder over at the Atlantic has posted his interview with Professor Glenn Sulmasy, whose new book The National Security Court System: A Natural Evolution of Justice in an Age of Terror has just been published by OUP. Ambinder summarizes the central arguments and proposals of Sulmasy's book: Sulmasy expands on what he calls a "hybrid" approach to the quandary of...

|
02 Aug

Until his arrest by the Rwandan military earlier this year, General Laurent Nkunda, a Congolese Tutsi and former chairman of the Congolese Congrès National pour la Défense du Peuple (CNDP), had been considered one of the key destabilizing figures in eastern Congo. Back in 2004, Nkunda and his rebel troops took control of the South Kivu town of Bukavu,...

|
01 Aug

As part of his latest attack on Human Rights Watch, David Bernstein insists -- again -- that HRW "absolutely refuses to apologize or retract" when it is "wrong about Israel."  He also claims that, "[t]hough challenged," I have "yet to come up with another, legitimate example of HRW officially responded to legitimate criticisms from pro-Israel sources the way it responded...

|
30 Jul

Excellent news -- and a major blow to the AU's promise of impunity for Bashir, given the symbolic and practical importance of South Africa for the continent generally: SOUTH Africa will arrest Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir if he visits the country, despite an African Union decision to ignore a war crimes warrant against him, the foreign ministry said yesterday. Civil society...

|