North Korea has sentenced US citizen Kenneth Bae to 15 years' hard labor for "crimes against the state." In a clash on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan that lasted more than two hours, one Pakistani policeman was killed and two Afghani soldiers wounded. The UK Supreme Court has ruled that the government has been failing to meet EU air quality standards and...
An Ontario court in Yaiguaje v. Chevron has dismissed the Ecuadorian plaintiffs' efforts to enforce the Ecuadorian judgment against Chevron Canada. Essentially the dismissal rests on the doctrine of the separate legal identities of parent and subsidiary corporations. Chevron has no assets in Canada, and the subsidiaries' assets there cannot be attached to enforce a judgment against the parent...
I have no desire to get into an argument with Eugene Kontorovich about the ostensibly "landmark" decision of a French intermediate court -- especially because, like him, I am far from fluent in French and the decision strikes me as quite legally complicated. But it is important to push back against claims like these (emphasis mine): This is an extraordinarily important holding in...
The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights seems to be condemning the forced feeding of hunger-striking Guantanamo detainees as torture, or perhaps as cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment in violation of the Convention Against Torture. Force-feeding hunger strikers is a breach of international law, the UN’s human rights office said Wednesday, as US authorities tried to stem a...
This report out of Prensa Latina in Havana suggests that the ICJ has expressed some sort of positive opinion on quality of Bolivia's case against Chile. In a press conference, [Bolivian Foreign Minister] Choquehuanca announced the International Court notified Chile on the start of the process and reasserted the Bolivian will of not affecting the bilateral relations with Chile. He also said the...
[Eugene Kontorovich is a Professor of Law at Northwestern University School of Law and blogs at the Volokh Conspiracy, where this contribution is cross-posted.] In an important but largely ignored case, a French Court of Appeals in Versailles ruled last month that construction of a light rail system in the Israeli-controlled West Bank by a French company does not violate international law. In...
US President Barack Obama is making a new push to close the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, saying Gitmo is damaging US interests. Chile will be Latin America's only representative in the 2014-2015 UN Security Council. The ECHR has ruled that Ukraine violated former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko's rights by detaining her for politically motivated reasons. The genocide trial against Guatemalan dictator...
I want to take a moment to spruik (if you don't know the word, look it up!) Jeffrey Kahn's new book, Mrs. Shipley's Ghost: The Right to Travel and Terrorist Watchlists, which has just been published by the University of Michigan Press. Here is the publisher's description: Today, when a single person can turn an airplane into a guided missile, no...
The Syrian Prime Minister has survived a car bomb in Damascus, an event UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon labelled a "terrorist attack." Ban Ki-Moon also urged Syria to allow international experts access in order to establish whether chemical weapons were used. Meanwhile, in a phone call to President Putin, President Obama has expressed his concern over the use of chemical weapons in Syria. The European...
I have now had the opportunity to read both Judge van den Wyngaert's request to be excused from the Kenyatta case and the Presidency's decision to grant that request. There is no question that workload did indeed play a role in the Judge's decision to withdraw. But it also seems clear that there was at least one other reason, as...
[Katherine Florey is Professor of Law at UC Davis] I come late to this discussion. Professors Alford and Whytock have adeptly explored the question of whether international human rights litigation might be reframed under state tort law. To their observations, I would add the following: Because state choice-of-law methodology is incredibly diverse, it is difficult to make predictions or generalizations about...
Last week, the government of Bolivia filed an application in the International Court of Justice against Chile arguing that Chile has breached its "obligation to negotiate in good faith and effectively with Bolivia in order to reach an agreement granting Bolivia a fully sovereign access to the Pacific Ocean." Is it just me, or is this the weakest case ever filed at the...
