In association with the International Commission of Jurists

General

15 Feb

As you can see, we have been having some technical difficulties. We hope to be back in business as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience....

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15 Feb

Bob Jacobson, a partner in New Rule Sets Project, LLC (the consulting firm started by Tom Barnett) and the Managing Editor of "Rule Set Reset," a journal that expands on the ideas of The Pentagon's New Map, has written reacting to my post comparing and contrasting the idea of "rule sets" to the lawyer's conception of international law. Bob writes...

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15 Feb

Gregg Easterbrook, no patsy for the Bush Administration, has a terrific column in this week's New Republic Online ($) pointing out that amid all the hoopla tomorrow over the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol, the Bush EPA has quietly stitched together an international plan to reduce potential global warming gases in roughly the same amounts as Kyoto. According...

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14 Feb

While the NYT and Samantha Power have been fretting about the U.S. opposition to an ICC referral for Sudan, the U.S. (apparently listening to the wise counsel of Peggy and/or Hillary Clinton) has moved ahead with a draft Security Council Resolution calling for a 10,000-man peacekeeping force for Sudan as well as various other measures. This will not solve everything...

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14 Feb

Japan announced today that it would allow fishing expeditions to Okinotorishima, an obscure island 1000 miles southeast of Japan. For Law of the Sea aficionados, this sets up a pending battle over the size of Japan's "exclusive economic zone" because if Okinotorishima is merely some "rocks" (as China says), Japan's EEZ is substantially smaller than it currently claims. Countries have...

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14 Feb

As further reports of UN peacekeeper atrocities continue to flow out of the D.R. Congo, an interesting legal puzzle arises: Can those peacekeepers be prosecuted for war crimes by the ICC? The answer is probably yes, no thanks to the U.S., which has been introducing annual resolutions in the Security Council granting immunity to UN peacekeepers since 2002, but which...

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13 Feb

As the ICC gears up to issue its first arrest warrants against rebel leaders in Uganda, church leaders there are warning that the warrants could upset already fraying peace negotiations. I don't know anything about the Ugandan situation except that the Ugandan government was the one that referred the case to the ICC, has been trying to withdraw the...

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13 Feb

The NAFTA Secretariat posted this decision on Friday remanding to the U.S. Department of Commerce a decision by Commerce to impose anti-dumping penalties on Oil Country Tubular Goods from Mexico. This decision is authorized by Chapter 19 of NAFTA, which authorizes the formation of Binational Arbitration Panels to review antidumping determinations made by domestic authorities (in this case, the U.S....

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12 Feb

In a nomination that has been widely-expected, John B. Bellinger, III, formerly the legal adviser for the National Security Council under Condoleezza Rice, has been nominated to be the new Legal Adviser of the State Department, succeeding William Taft, IV.According to a short bio available online, prior to joining the NSC, Bellinger was a counsel for national security matters...

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11 Feb

I should first thank Prof. Heller for adding his insightful comments to our blog. I hope to return the favor at his blog-home at the Yin Blog. Both he and Peggy have useful comments, although I think both are reading much more into my post than I myself intended (but I suppose that is my own fault)....

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