Julian correctly notes that international tribunals aren’t very effective at stopping ongoing killings. He misses the point that they (a) are effective in helping define post-conflict legal order in transitional states and consequently (b) play an important part in saving lives in the long run. Kristof understands this. He understands that in order to get some type of stability in...
Scott Sullivan at the Transatlantic Assembly has picked up an interesting point on Judge Green’s Guantanamo opinion. He notes that Judge’s Green opinion states that it is “unnecessary” to look to the detainees’ customary international law claims as they were found to have Fifth Amendment and the Geneva Convention claims. Sullivan argues that this is unsatisfying and concludes “This seems...
Following up my Darfur post , I note that Nicholas Kristof of the NYT weighs in and, predictably, lays all the blame here on the U.S. opposition to the ICC. He quotes Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch: "The I.C.C. could start tomorrow saving lives . . . [w]ith the [ad hoc] tribunal route, you're talking about another year of...
Peru has announced it will bring an application to the International Court of Justice seeking to force Japan to turn over former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori to face corruption charges. I've heard rumors about Peru bringing such a case for years but I never figured out what the legal basis would be because Peru and Japan do not have...
Professor E. Allan Farnsworth of Columbia Law School passed away yesterday. Although best known as the dean of contract scholars, a Reporter of the Restatement (Second) of the Law of Contracts, and the author of influential treatise and casebook on contracts, Professor Farnsworth also had a profound influence on private international law. Not only was he a central figure...
I've blogged before suggesting that the U.N. was being an obstacle to more action to stop the atrocities in Darfur, but perhaps I was unfair to the UN. Its report on Darfur (which can be found here) found plenty of horrible atrocities (though not genocide) that it believes rises to the level of war crimes. More to the point, the...
I can't resist weighing in on the Guantanamo decision again, although I agree with Peggy's analysis yesterday. I think the decision is a defeat for the government (per Andreas) and that it moves beyond existing precedent and certainly beyond past practice. That does not mean it will be reversed, but it is certainly pushing the envelope of judicial review of...
I had initially thought I would “liveblog” the Santa Clara University conference I attended last week but the lack of free wireless internet access and the limitations of my typing skills stymied that plan. So instead of simply recapitulating the discussions and presentations, including my own (which will be published in any event), let me instead profile three of the...
It was reported today that the Coalition Provisional Authority for Iraq was unable to account for $8.8 billion -- yes, that's BILLION -- in assistance money spent in the first year following the US invasion. To put the dollar amounts in perspective, that's more than twice the annual operating budget for the UN and almost $2 billion more than...
James Traub published this excellent essay in yesterday's NYTimes magazine discussing military involvement in humanitarian activities, an issue I addressed in this previous post. His main point is a riposte to Joseph Nye's theory of "soft power," the notion that the United States projects it power not simply through the "hard power" of coercive military and economic strength, but also...
Andreas Paulus has a fair point that Judge Green's decision can be read as a significant defeat for the government's core arguments on the legality of the Guantanamo detentions and the government's own reading of the Rasul case. But there are elements of the decision that may deflate the hopes of lawyers planning on further tort cases on behalf of...
This Reuters story suggests that a district court judge has held the Guantanamo Bay military tribunals unconstitutional. As usual, Reuters (and other news agencies) are overstating the scope of the decision. Rather, it is more accurate to say that the district court judge has refused to grant all of the U.S. government's motion to dismiss claims by certain detainees...
