In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Topics

04 Jan

John Pike, of GlobalSecurity.org website, has a provocative op-ed in today's Washington Post (January 4, 2009, B3) arguing that the evolution of battlefield robots might mean robots as the soldiers that do the killing on future battlefields: Within a decade, the Army will field armed robots with intellects that possess, as H.G. Wells put it, "minds that are to our minds...

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04 Jan

According to the ever-reliable Sudan Vision Daily, the Pre-Trial Chamber has already decided to issue the arrest warrant for Bashir: The entire Sudanese people will not be surprised if the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against the Sudanese President Omer Al-Bashir because the decision of the ICC judges was circulated by the UN chief Ban KI-moon, the US State...

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04 Jan

... economics and Hume are the fashion. (The Red and the Black, volume 2, chapter 53, "The Clergy, Their Forests, Liberty.")  Special edition for ... Eric Posner, Adrian Vermeule, Andrew Guzman, Jack Goldsmith, and Kal Raustiala!  (Utilitarianism has a long cultural, indeed literary, history.)...

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03 Jan

Comments like this one, made not by some obscure commenter but by David Bernstein, a law professor at George Mason and a member of The Volokh Conspiracy, in response to my Dershowitz post below: Herein the phoniness of international law.  Humble Law Student has raised several significant questions with Heller’s analysis, including whether it matters under international law, as it surely...

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03 Jan

Nan Hunter has posted on her blog the transcript of a phone conversation from April 23, 1971, between Henry Kissinger and the poet Allen Ginsberg. Ginsberg was trying to set-up a dialogue among Kissinger (and other Nixon officials) and peace activists. He was concerned that Kissinger might not know how to end the Vietnam War and he said he had some suggestions. (Unfortunately, they're not in the...

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03 Jan

Alan Dershowitz published an editorial yesterday in the Wall Street Journal that argues Israel's attacks on Hamas in Gaza are "perfectly proportionate."  I have no desire to argue the substance of that point, in part because views on Israel and Palestine are largely impervious to facts or argument (on both sides), but largely because the concept of proportionality is so...

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02 Jan

  The Somali piracy problem is not really a military one. No one doubts that the world's modern navies can overwhelm any pirates they find.  The problem is really administrative and legal.  For instance, France's recent reported capture of more Somalia-based pirates is kind of cool, but what has really been accomplished. According to this report, France is planning to take...

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02 Jan

I guess what surprises me is that the Vatican ever did have a rule of automatically adhering to international law. But as of yesterday, that rule, along with the rule automatically adopting Italian law as part of its internal legal order, is history.   The Vatican has [] decided to scrutinise international treaties before deciding whether or not to adhere to...

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02 Jan

What happens to litigation that obviously should be pursued in a foreign country but is prevented from doing so by a forum non conveniens blocking statute? That's the question presented in a recent Florida state court case of Scotts Co. v. Hacienda Loma Linda. Here are the basic facts: Scotts sells a product to Hacienda that allegedly...

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30 Dec

Germany has sued Italy before the ICJ challenging successful Italian lawsuits that have denied Germany's sovereign immunity arising out of World War II forced labor claims. The ICJ press release is here. Here is Germany's key argument: “In recent years, Italian judicial bodies have repeatedly disregarded the jurisdictional immunity of Germany as a sovereign State. The critical...

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29 Dec

As I have mentioned before, France and the UK have expressed their willingness to support deferring the ICC's investigation of Bashir if the Sudan prosecutes Ahmed Haroun and Ali Kushayb domestically.  It doesn't look like the Sudan is going to take them up on their offer: [Ali Karti, the State Minister at Sudan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs] reiterated the ability of...

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