Speaking of Grotius, a Dutch court ruled this week that it would not extradite an alleged Al Qaeda suspect to the U.S. because his fundamental legal rights could not be guaranteed. The Court held, according to AP: “[t]he risk that the [individual] will be confronted with suspicions of involvement in the al Qaeda network is certainly not imaginary. … This...
Hugo Grotius, the Founding Father of international law, wrote in On the Laws of War and Peace (1625) that "So far from any thing in the principles of nature being repugnant to war, every part of them indeed rather favours it. For the preservation of our lives and persons, which is the end of war … is most suitable to...
In another sign of China's arrival as major world power, China's space program successfully put two Chinese "taikonauts" into orbit Wednesday using their Shenzhou VI rockets. The state-run People's Daily newspaper has set up a website for tracking the progress of the taikonauts here. This is yet another boost to China's self-confidence (the 2008 Olympics in Beijing is another) and...
Percy Bysshe Shelly said that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. If that’s true (and even if it's not), then we need to consider why Harold Pinter has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Think of this as being another way to assess the mood of our European allies and perhaps world opinion more generally.As Peggy and Roger...
The Contracting States to the European Convention are obligated to "hold free elections at reasonable intervals by secret ballot, under conditions which will ensure the free expression of the opinion of the people in the choice of the legislature.” An English statute dating back to 1870 provides that: "A convicted person during the time that he is detained in a...
The story coming out of Uganda bears emphasis for its impact on the ICC doctrine of complementarity. Under Article 17 of the Rome Statute, “the Court shall determine that a case is inadmissible where … [t]he case is being investigated or prosecuted by a State which has jurisdiction over it, unless the State is unwilling or unable genuinely to...
For better or for worse, the Arctic ice caps may be melting, opening up lots of virgin territory for economic development, the NYT reports. It may also raise the stakes over U.S. non-ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).There appears to be lots of money to be made from melting ice caps. A Denver entrepreneur,...
Great story in Sunday's L.A. Times about the global web of pirated movies. The amazing sequence of events outlined in the article underscores the social epidemic of piracy. The story of bootlegged copies of Spider-Man 2 after it premiered in New York on June 30, 2004 is quite alarming:June 30, 2004, one minute after midnight: A cammer illegally records Spider-Man...
Well ok, not exactly. But that is how an American television drama would portray an American version of what has happened today in Germany. Coalition governments are nothing new in Europe, but to an American ear the idea that major opposition parties will have a coalition with Merkel’s CDU cabinet filled with key members of Schröder’s team is,...
Lest it seems like the U.S. Senate is the graveyard of all treaties, it is worth noting that the U.S. Senate has recently ratified two conventions: the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime and the Inter-American Convention Against Terrorism as well as a Protocol of Amendment to the International Convention on the Simplification and Harmonization of Customs Procedures. The...
I always follow the news of the Nobel Peace Prize with great interest and occasionally I find myself pleased with their choices. But this year something struck me as particularly odd. Every ten years the Nobel Peace Prize returns to the subject of nuclear disarmament, and each time it goes to a peaceful dove and not a peace-loving hawk.In 1975...
Interesting column by David Brooks in the New York Times on Sunday. Money quote:I believe that social mobility is the core of the American experience. I believe that society should be structured so that as many boys and girls as possible can work, and rise the way young Hamilton and Lincoln did.If something is going to make American society more...
