In association with the International Commission of Jurists

General

20 Feb

There is a fascinating case brewing at ICSID concerning new laws established by the South African government to redress historical, social, and economic inequalities in the mining and energy sectors. Luke Peterson of Investment Treaty News has the details: European-based investors in South Africa's mining industry have mounted an international arbitration against the South African Government alleging that that country's...

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16 Feb

1948 is a new international law blog from Otto Spijkers and Richard Norman. It is based out of the University of Leiden. Why is the blog called 1948? I 'll let them explain:1948 was a leap year, beginning on a Thursday. More importantly, 1948 saw the creation of the Organization of American States, the Berlin Blockade and the beginnings...

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16 Feb

Last week, the Southern District of New York offered up a nice, succinct, high quality opinion on treaty interpretation that does a wonderful job of looking at plain meaning, object and purpose to interpret an ambiguous phrase in the Montreal Convention. There is nothing exciting about Baah v. Virgin Atlantic Airways (2007 WL 424993)--it related to injuries suffered from hot beverages...

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16 Feb

As the BBC reports, "a meeting in Washington of global political leaders has reached a new agreement on tackling climate change." The meeting included representatives from the key non-Kyoto Treaty countries, the U.S. and China. So have we finally reached a breakthrough on global climate change policy? Nope. At least not yet. The meeting in Washington D.C....

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15 Feb

The role of reputation in international law and international relations is incredibly hard to quantify. Among assertive unilateralists in the US, it is often argued that dents to American reputation that result, for example, from deviations from well-established international human rights standards, are outweighed by the need for other states to deal with the U.S. Internationalists, on the other hand,...

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15 Feb

Last week the D.C. Circuit rendered an alarming decision ruling that multinational forces in Iraq could not transfer an American citizen held in Iraq to an Iraqi court for criminal prosecution for alleged terrorist activities he committed while in Iraq. In Omar v. Harvey, an American-Jordanian dual national was arrested in Baghdad in October 2004, together with four other...

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14 Feb

Human Rights First has launched an initiative known as Prime Time Torture that seeks to address the issue of torture on television. It laments the fact that "it used to be that only villains on television tortured. Today, 'good guy' and heroic American characters torture — and this torture is depicted as necessary, effective and even patriotic." I...

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13 Feb

Although many New Yorkers wouldn't blink an eye if it happened, NY City Mayor Mike Bloomberg is worried that the United Nations may move its headquarters away from New York City, according to this report. Bloomberg is trying to meet with Secretary of State Rice to get her help on this matter. If the U.N. leaves town, where would...

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13 Feb

Prof. Jon Adler of Case Western is liveblogging Human Rights Watch's Kenneth Roth as he delivers a lecture at Case Western Reserve University Law School. He addresses many topics, but here is one we tackled here on this blog last summer. Roth defended HRW against charges of bias in its reporting on the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict. According to Roth, HRW’s allegations...

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