In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Topics

04 Mar

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced (h/t Jurist) proposals to circumscribe the applicability of Britain's universal jurisdiction law.  The modification will likely cut back on the ability of private citizens to seek arrest warrants, by requiring a determination by a public prosecutor before issuing such warrants.  The details are not clear, but the policy underlying it is: There is already growing...

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04 Mar

Last fall, the U.S. joined Egypt in a carefully worded statement in favor of free expression, but it raised concerns that the U.S. was implicitly endorsing the movement in many Islamic countries to ban blasphemous (or anti-Islamic) speech.   In an otherwise anodyne address to the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs...

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03 Mar

I am delighted to announce that Luis Moreno-Ocampo has appointed my friend and colleague Tim McCormack to be the Office of the Prosecutor's Special Adviser on International Humanitarian Law.  From the announcement: Professor McCormack, from the Melbourne Law School at the University of Melbourne will help the Office of the Prosecutor to develop a solid understanding of complex legal issues such...

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01 Mar

Cross-posted at Balkinization Earlier this term, the Supreme Court granted certiorari to decide the latest issue in the sad case of the Uighurs still held at Guantanamo Bay after having been cleared of “enemy combatant” status by both Bush and Obama Administrations. U.S. treaty obligations restricting the ‘refoulement’ of individuals to countries where they’re likely to face torture have effectively...

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01 Mar

[caption id="attachment_11512" align="alignleft" width="120" caption=" "][/caption] [Michael J. Glennon is Professor of Law at The Fletcher School at Tufts University] The article addresses a question that is particularly important for the United States. The Obama Administration has begun to express a renewed interest in the International Criminal Court (ICC), after almost a decade of distance between the Court and the United States....

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01 Mar

The wide-ranging book, which is edited by Carsten Stahn and Larissa van den Herik and published by Cambridge/TMC Asser, is well worth checking out.  Here is the table of contents: Part I. The Influence of Scholars and Practitioners on the Development and Conceptualization of International Criminal Law: 1. 'Satires of circumstance': some notes on war crimes trials and irony...

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28 Feb

At least according to Dominic Hughes, a BBC reporter who obviously can't be bothered to know what he's talking about: Perhaps not surprisingly Radovan Karadzic has been a reluctant participant in this trial. The former leader of the Bosnian Serbs has appeared just a few times, regularly boycotting the process. Apparently, "once" now qualifies as "regularly."  Good job, BBC! ADDENDUM: Hughes also claims that...

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28 Feb

My new Weekly Standard essay - although “polemic” is probably closer to it.  And thanks, Julian, for the plug below! Well, regular readers have been hearing about this piece for a while, and I have posted various arguments from it (concerning targeted killing and Predator drones and the CIA and armed conflict and self-defense, and my general concern that the...

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28 Feb

McGill University law students have started a new blog about international law, Legal Frontiers. Their official launch post states: The goal of Legal Frontiers is to create a scholarly, social network where students interested in International law can identify key issues and challenges; test new theories; and draw attention to important causes, cases or alternative points of view. Having been inspired...

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27 Feb

Both Humblelawstudent and Stuart Taylor have criticized my previous post.  Both misunderstand the federal torture statute and the concept of torture in important -- and unfortunately all too common -- ways, so it is worth explaining their errors in a separate post. Let's begin with HLS.  He claims that, contrary to my assertion, "the statute requires the interrogator to actually...

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27 Feb

The BBC reports: The European Court of Justice has ruled that Israeli goods made in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank cannot be considered Israeli. This means goods made by Israelis or Jews in the West Bank cannot benefit from a trade deal giving Israel preferential access to EU markets. At first glance, this seems like the correct result, especially given the...

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