The Roper v. Simmons and Medellin discussions highlight one of the points of tension between the US and its closest international allies – the continuing use of the death penalty in this country. Julian has elucidated in his thorough and helpful discussions here and here the important constitutional law and federalism issues raised by Medellin, as well as the question...
I recently posted about Saddam’s trial moving forward. Yesterday, one of the judges of the Iraqi Special Tribunal, Barwize Mohammed Mahmoud al-Merani, and his son were murdered. (News report is here.) The judge was also a leading Kurdish politician and his son was an attorney at the tribunal. Authorities believe they were killed by insurgents.This comes a day after the...
I am gratified for some of the comments below to my very long post on Medellin. Please indulge me as I follow up with a further clarification of why I believe the ICJ judgment should not be enforced by the courts.I agree with Andreas that enforcing the ICJ judgment would not necessarily make the ICJ a higher court. Rather, the...
Busy news day here at Opinio Juris. The ACLU and Human Rights First announce that they, along with a group of former military officers, have sued Donald Rumsfeld over the use of torture and/or other abuses at Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, and Afghanistan.Really quick take: The biggest practical obstacle here is Rumsfeld's immunity as a government official. Still, there might be...
The Supreme Court today held that the practice of executing individuals for crimes they committed below the age of 18 is a violation of the Eighth Amendment. Justice Kennedy's opinion for the Court here includes an extended discussion of the relevance of foreign and international practice to the interpretation of the Eighth Amendment. Some highlights on this issue:Our determination...
Warning: this is a rather long post summarizing the various arguments raised by all the three briefs filed yesterday in Medellin , with my comments and thoughts (for what they are worth). Although this post is long, it still beats reading all three briefs, links to which can be found here, here, and here (Hello? Supreme Court Clerks assigned to...
As I noted on Friday, respondent's brief were due yesterday in Medellin v. Dretke, the Supreme Court case considering the domestic enforcement of judgments by the International Court of Justice. Texas filed a brief (which can be found here) as did a group of law professors (myself included) who filed an amicus brief here in support. But the big question...
In this opinion handed down today, Judge Henry Floyd of the US District Court in Charleston granted Jose Padilla's habeas petition, explicitly rejecting the government's position that the President has broad powers to detain US citizens as enemy combatants. The government has 45 days to charge Padilla with a crime, hold him as a material witness, or release him. Here's...
In a case argued this morning at the Supreme Court, the Department of Justice has sided with a group of disabled cruise passengers who sued Norwegian Cruise Lines for failing to provide the kinds of accommodations required on public transportation under the Americans with Disabilities Act. NCL argues that, because their ships fly under the Bahamian flag, extraterritoriality doctrines should...
Looking beyond the very real problem of human rights abusers sitting as members of the UN Human Rights Commission, UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer (a former colleague from my days in practice) has a cogent essay in last week's TNR ($) criticizing the Commission's 1503 procedure. The 1503 procedure was introduced in the 1970s to enable individuals to bring...
Central America expert David Holiday points me to this LA Times op-ed yesterday on the recent Mexican Supreme Court decision to bar an indictment for genocide against a former Mexican President. If correct, the article suggests that the recent fad for genocide indictments in Latin America are being driven almost completely by the requirements of international law. Thus, as I...
Arguments will begin today in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn over a motion to dismiss an Alien Tort Statute lawsuit by Vietnamese nationals seeking damages from manufacturers of Agent Orange, an herbicide used by the U.S. during the Vietnam War. This remarkable suit is brought as a class action on behalf of every...
