The story coming out of Iraq of four members of Christian Peacemaker Team being held hostage by an insurgent organization provides a new twist on hostage-taking in Iraq. There are several factors that make this situation so complicated.First, these hostages are pacifists. CPT is founded by Mennonites and Quakers and is one of the latest incarnations of that long pacifist...
SCOTUSBlog notes that the Fourth Circuit has, unusually, denied the government's unopposed motion to transfer former enemy combatant Jose Padilla to civilian custody. Instead, it has ordered the government to brief the question of whether the Fourth Circuit should vacate its current judgment upholding Padilla's detention as an enemy combatant in light of the new facts revealed by the government...
The International Criminal Court Assembly of States Parties has opened their second session in the Hague this week. The Assembly of States Parties is composed of representatives of all of the governments party to the ICC Statute, that is to say, those countries that have signed and ratified the ICC Statute.Of course, the U.S. has famously revoked its signature to...
First of all, I want to thank Chris, Peggy, Julian and Roger for letting me spend some time here at Opinio Juris. As an avid reader, I’m looking forward to the opportunity to exchange ideas with other Opinio Juris readers.To that end, I want to start off with a question about judicial treatment of non-self-executing treaties. U.S. courts have certainly...
Today is my last day as a guest-blogger here at Opinio Juris, and so I'd like to begin by thinking Peggy, Roger, Julian, and Chris for their hospitality. I must say that I have a new respect for the effort that they put forth in generating the wonderful product from which we all benefit on this blog. Let's...
Larry Solum at Legal Theory Blog is highlighting a chapter entitled Comparative Law and Language by Vivian Grosswald Curran in a forthcoming book The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Law edited by Reinhold Zimmermann and Mathias Reimann. From the abstract it sounds quite interesting: Comparative law is law's cybernetics, or 'theory of messiness.' It attempts to...
Federal courts routinely assert that they are bound to give deference to treaty interpretations adopted by the Executive branch. See, e.g., Sumitomo Shoji America, Inc. v. Avagliano, 457 U.S. 176, 184-85 (1992) (stating that the "meaning attributed to treaty provisions by the Government agencies charged with their negotiation and enforcement is entitled to great weight"). And, at least...
Somehow in the Thanksgiving rush this important story escaped my attention. Last week a jury in Memphis, Tennessee awarded $6 million to four victims of torture in the early 1980s. Nicholas Carranza, a former colonel in the Salvadoran Army, was held responsible for the torture of the plaintiffs and the death of family members. CNN has a brief story here....
Professor Duncan Hollis of Temple University School of Law will be blogging with us for the next month. Professor Hollis is a specialist in treaty law and has edited a new book, National Treaty Law and Practice. Other examples of his scholarship can be found on his SSRN page. Prior to entering the academy, Professor Hollis was in...
My vote for the most important international law case in November is Doe v. Israel, ___ F.Supp.2d ___ (D.D.C. Nov. 10, 2005), available here. The case arises out of claims by Palestinians living in Israel or the West Bank against public and private Israeli defendants, including Ariel Sharon, Shimon Peres, the State of Israel, Israeli government instrumentalities, and various private...
The LA Times recently carried this op-ed by former Australian FM Gareth Evans on the successes of preventive diplomacy and peacekeeping (perhaps better described as peacemaking) missions around the world. He cites the Human Security Report 2005 for evidence that the incidence of war is on the decline, and that third-party interventions (diplomatic, sanctions, military deployments) play a large role...
Results from the Egyptian elections reveal that members of a radical Islamic group, the Muslim Brotherhood, have won up to 29 more seats in the 444 seat Egyptian parliament. Members of that group now have 76 seats overall, or 17 percent of all parliamentary seats. As the Financial Times has noted, "President Hosni Mubarak’s National Democratic party still looks set...
