As everyone on Twitter knows by now, the US government has released the notorious memorandum in which the OLC provides the supposed legal justification for killing Anwar al-Awlaki. I'm a bit disappointed not to get a mention in the memo; people in the know have suggested that a post I wrote in April 2010 led the OLC to substantially rewrite it. Vanity aside, though, I'm...
Here he is, defending General Sisi, the new President of Egypt: This is a general, but a general who has studied in both the United States and the United Kingdom, so he is certainly someone who is familiar with the rule of law. Because everyone knows that you can't learn about the rule of law outside the West. Duh. PS. Abbott made his silly comment as a way...
Most of the discussion about Abu Khattallah's capture in Libya has focused on the operation's basis -- or lack thereof -- in domestic US law. Less attention has been paid to whether international law permitted the US to use force on Libyan soil. As Marty Lederman recently noted at Just Security, Abu Khattallah's capture can potentially be justified on two different grounds:...
I'm not sure how I missed this, but these are very strong -- and atypically blunt -- allegations by Fatou Bensouda: The International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Fatou Bensouda urged the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to investigate reports that the UN peacekeeping force in Darfur (UNAMID) deliberately contributed in covering up crimes in the restive region. In reference to US-based Foreign Policy...
Full disclosure: Taylor is represented by John Jones QC, who is my colleague at Doughty Street Chambers. Charles Taylor has filed a disturbing motion with the Special Court for Sierra Leone's Residual Mechanism, requesting that he be transferred from prison in the UK to a prison in Rwanda because of his mistreatment by the British government. Here are the key paragraphs from the motion's introduction: Charles...
With all the talk of the End of Treaties and Treaty Survival, it's worth noting that the wheels of multilateral treaty-making have not come to a complete stop. Earlier today, the ILO adopted a Protocol to ILO Convention No. 29, the 1930 Forced Labour Convention. On paper, the 1930 Convention was a success -- it currently has 177 parties. But it's...
I want to call readers' attention to a remarkable Israeli NGO, Breaking the Silence, which collects the testimony of Israeli soldiers about the brutalization of Palestinians during the occupation. Here is the NGO's self-description: Breaking the Silence is an organization of veteran combatants who have served in the Israeli military since the start of the Second Intifada and have taken it upon themselves to...
I had a good chuckle this morning when I read Libya's latest attempt to avoid complying with its obligation to surrender Saif Gaddafi to the ICC. (Which, of course, it may be genuinely unable to do, given that he's still being held in Zintan. But that's another story.) The source of my amusement is Libya's new excuse for not being able to...
The New York iteration of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival will be held June 12-22. A list of films to be screened in New York is available here. HRW explains the goal of the festival: Through our Human Rights Watch Film Festival we bear witness to human rights violations and create a forum for courageous individuals on both sides of...
Lawfare reports today on a study published in Political Science Quarterly about how ordinary Pakistanis view US drone strikes in their country. According to the post, the study "[c]hallenge[s] the conventional wisdom" that there is "deep opposition" among Pakistanis to drone strikes and that "the associated anger [i]s a major source of the country's rampant anti-Americanism." I don't have access to the...
On May 19, the Legal Directorate of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office held their 2nd Annual International Law Lecture. The lecture was delivered by Peter Maurer, the President of the ICRC, who spoke on "War, Protection and the Law: The ICRC's approach to International Humanitarian Law." More information about the speech is available at EJIL: Talk!, but I thought it...
One of the great advantages of being a legal academic is the ability to get involved in actual litigation. I have consulted on a number of cases at the ICTY, ICTR, and ICC over the years, most obviously serving as one of Radovan Karadzic's legal associates, but it's been a while, and I've been itching to get back in the game. So I...
