Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has spun up a tiff with Tony Blair in which the words “international law” are getting flung around a lot. To little effect. According to the BBC:On Wednesday in the House of Commons, Mr Blair was asked by Colin Burgon, an MP from his Labour party, whether Britain should follow "a really right-wing US republican agenda"...
Joel Tracthman of the International Economic Law and Policy Blog has a good summary of the GMO decision. I like the title: "From 800 pages to 1." Check it out. Rob Howse also adds his thoughts here.Also, I note with great enthusiasm the new list of contributors to that blog. They have recently added Joost Pauwelyn,...
The Appeals Chamber of the ICTR has unanimously upheld a Trial Chamber's acquittal of Andre Ntagerura and Emmanuel Bagambiki, two high-ranking Rwandan officials, on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. The charges stemmed from a series of massacres committed in Rwanda's Cyangugu Province in 1994 that killed more than 800,000 people, mainly Tutsis. The Trial Chamber held...
With the Winter Olympic Games opening today in Torino, I thought you might be interested in knowing how athletic disputes arising during the Olympics will be resolved. Every Olympic Games has their share of legal disputes, and this year will be no exception.Essentially disputes are resolved by an ad hoc arbitral body that is on call to immediately adjudicate any...
Lest Roger win the competition for the most unusual story of the day, gameindustry.biz is reporting that the Red Cross has been contacting videogame developers to protest the use of its symbols in their games. Such use is widespread:Just about every video game that involves combat uses the Red Cross symbol in some form or fashion. From...
This IHT report suggests the U.S. is about to slash military aid to Bolivia by 96% in response to Bolivia's failure to ratify agreements shielding U.S. soldiers from the jurisdiction of the ICC. The State Department suggests this is because of a U.S. law requiring such aid to be cut, but it is also truee that federal law allows the...
According to this CNN account, the Somali pirates captured last month by the U.S. Navy are challenging the jurisdiction of the Kenyan court that is planning to try them. The U.S. apparently turned over the suspects to Kenya. The pirates were captured in international waters, but as I pointed out here, any nation should still have jurisdiction to try such...
There’s a relatively new blog out there that I think Opinio Juris readers will find interesting and full of insight: The Transitional Justice Forum. The bloggers at TJF cover all sorts of topics on democratic transitions, post-conflict management, international criminal law, and other related areas. TJF’s bloggers are an impressive group including, among others, Mark Drumbl, Christopher Le...
Last week a NAFTA arbitration panel rendered an award in the case of International Thunderbird Gaming Corp. v. Mexico. The essential issue is whether an investment in certain gaming operations based on assurances given by Mexican authorities could give rise to a NAFTA claim when the government subsequently refused to permit such operations.The key facts are as follows: A written...
I received a thoughtful email from a reader yesterday on my post about Darfur, Kristof and O'Reilly. He writes: "Doesn't it beg the question as to 'the extent [to which] in attacking O'Reilly Kristof is attacking conservatives by proxy'? Mainstream media are indeed disturbing, not least because they set up these facile proxies, which figures like O'Reilly and Kristof are...
President Bush has often insisted that “if you harbor a terrorist, you’re equally as guilty as the terrorists.” In that regard, it’s instructive to consider the ongoing extradition battle between Venezuela and the United States over Luis Posada Carriles, who is currently being held in federal detention in Texas. By any definition, Posada richly deserves the description “terrorist,” yet the...
This on-the-ground report from Sudan provides a brief but interesting glimpse at Sudan's effort to avoid transferring defendants to the International Criminal Court. Sudan has created special tribunals to try individuals of suspected war crimes. If its domestic processes are deemed sufficient by the ICC, then the ICC cannot exercise jurisdiction over alleged war crimes in Sudan. This has always...
