My colleague Anne Orford has a fascinating contribution today to the official blog of the London Review of Books questioning the universality of the supposedly universal international law that underlies the Security Council's authorization of military action in Libya. Here is a taste: In 1954, Carl Schmitt bemoaned the destruction of European international law in the 20th century. According to...
[Rachel Davis is Legal Advisor to the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Business and Human Rights] On March 24, the UN released a much-anticipated set of Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights. The Guiding Principles seek to provide for the first time an authoritative global standard for preventing and addressing the risk of adverse human rights impacts...
The following is a guest post by Natalie Oman, an Assistant Professor of Legal Studies at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in Canada. As the Libyan rebels' requests for an internationally-enforced no-fly zone have multiplied and regional support has coalesced among the Arab League, the GCC and some members of the African Union, public hand-wringing over the lack of...
Moreno-Ocampo said the following today: The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court says information of attacks on civilians by forces loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi suggests they could constitute a crime against humanity. Luis Moreno Ocampo says he has assembled a team to collect more information and has been in contact with Libyan officials and army...
Here's something you don't see every day: A disciplinary hearing for the chief defence lawyer for former Liberian President Charles Taylor was adjourned indefinitely Friday after just seven minutes because one judge refused to attend. The hearing by the Special Court for Sierra Leone was to weigh possible punishment for British lawyer Courtenay Griffiths after he stormed out...
David Bernstein and NGO Monitor have worked themselves into a lather about Human Rights Watch's decision to appoint Shawan Jabarin, the head of Al-Haq, a leading Palestinian human-rights group, to its Mideast Advisory Board. In support of their ire, they cite decisions of the Israeli Supreme Court that have concluded that Jabarin is also an official in the Popular Front...
According to the Jerusalem Post, five purchasers of Jimmy Carter's new book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid have filed a $5 million lawsuit in federal court in New York against Carter and Simon & Schuster, the book's publisher. The lawsuit alleges that the book violates New York consumer-protection laws by claiming to be a work of non-fiction (my emphasis): The five...
Even when Moreno-Ocampo wins, he loses. Pre-Trial Chamber II recently rejected a request by Mohammed Hussein Ali, one of the six Kenyans for whom the OTP has sought summonses, to submit "observations" on the investigation That was an easy call; nothing in the Rome Statute permits a suspect to participate in the investigative process so early. The Pre-Trial Chamber nevertheless...
This must be that vibrant democracy Richard Cohen recently extolled in defense of denying democracy to Egyptians: The Knesset House Committee on Wednesday approved the composition of two parliamentary panels to investigate the funding sources of human rights organizations. Most of the opposition parties have decided to boycott the committees. The motion passed at the House Committee by a...
Samuel Witten is counsel at the law firm Arnold & Porter LLP. He worked at the State Department for 22 years, including six years as Deputy Legal Adviser (2001-2007) and three years as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration (2007-2010). The world’s attention has been riveted on the potential foreign policy implications of the recent...
A couple of years ago, Josh Newcomer and I argued that political commitments have developed to a point where they should receive constitutional scrutiny. In other words, we do not accept that because political commitments lack international legal force they should have absolute immunity from domestic legal processes. Indeed, to the extent that political commitments may perform the same (or at least...
Dr Jean-Marc Coicaud is one of the more thoughtful and reflective UN officials, and his response shows why. Broadly speaking, I agree with all three of his comments The conceptual, political and operational relationship between law and legitimacy will be treated differently by political and legal theorists. For some, lawfulness is both a necessary and a sufficient condition of legitimacy. For...
