International lawyers have long lamented that it is nearly impossible to get courts to apply and enforce treaties, especially to assess damages against government officials. All of this is about to change. A federal appeals court has held that the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (VCCR) creates a private right of action. I believe this marks the first time...
Lynndie England is headed for jail for her abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Displaying enlarged photos of the abuse, the prosecution emphasized “What soldier wouldn’t know that that's illegal? …She is enjoying, she is participating, all for her own sick humor." Although England is one of the most infamous of the torturers, the Army reportedly has opened more than...
Fascinating discussion here on whether Saddam Hussein should face the death penalty. The traditional arguments you might expect for and against the death penalty are reframed in the context of the pending trial of Hussein. Which State is urging Iraq to refrain from imposing the death penalty? The United States. Which political leader in Iraq temporarily suspended the death penalty...
Sometimes, the U.S. government seems at odds with all of its allies. The most recent example is the battle over the Convention for the Protection of the Diversity of Cultural Contents and Artistic Expressions sponsored by UNESCO, the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. U.S. Ambassador to UNESCO Louise Oliver criticizes the draft treaty, and UNESCO in general, for failing...
Peggy, Chris, and I are very pleased to announce that Professor Roger Alford of Pepperdine University will be joining Opinio Juris on a permanent basis. In addition to being a top-notch scholar, Roger was also a guest blogger here over the summer, contributing a number of fascinating posts from India. We are thrilled to have him as a permanent blogger.Welcome...
Professor Eric Posner has a typically provocative piece in the NYT arguing that some kind of political accommodation with the former Baathists in Iraq will have to be made before peace can come to Iraq. This means, as he notes, that while Saddam Hussein and his associates could be convicted of war crimes, the guilt cannot fall on every soldier...
The Cox International Center at Case Western is launching "Grotian Moment: The Saddam Trial Blog" which will bring together some of the leading scholars of international criminal law to comment on the upcoming trial of Saddam Hussein. Lots of international law bigwigs will be participating and they have already had quite a few interesting posts on topics such as the...
What do American astronauts, Russian rockets, and the Iranian nuclear program have in common? More than I ever realized.As it happens, the Senate approved a bill this week that would allow NASA to purchase Russian Soyuz space vehicles that could be used as a stop-gap between the end of the operational life of the shuttle fleet and the debut...
Israel has had a long and often unhappy relationship with international institutions, especially the U.N. Moreover, Israel's struggle with the Palestinians and the Arab states has also given it good reasons to be suspicious of international law, especially the kind of international law used to restrain its military power. So it is not exactly surprising to see this recent decision...
Transnational tribunals—mechanisms that allow sub-national actors such as individuals and companies to sue States for alleged infringements of their rights—are not only proliferating in number, they also have larger caseloads covering more substantive areas than ever before. I have just posted to SSRN an article assessing whether and how such tribunals cause normative change in the domestic legal and political...
Here is the U.S. Govt description of the recent deal where North Korea sort of agreed to give up its nuclear weapons program. Who knows if this deal will stick? But one thing to keep in mind from an international lawyer point of view: the agreement has some chance of success, precisely because it is probably not a treaty or...
Over at Slate, Julian Mortenson has submitted a series of dispatches from the Slobadan Milosevic trial at the ICTY which offer an up-close-and-personal angle on the 3-plus-years old prosecution of the notorious Serb leader on a series of war crimes charges. International prosecution has an important part to play in accountability for past crimes, for creating a forum for victims...
