Like Ken, I plan on discussing Phillip Alston's report on drone strikes when it's released. Alston was just at Melbourne Law School last week, talking about his role as rapporteur. He's a remarkable person. With regard to drone strikes in armed conflict, Ken quite rightly points out that CIA operators cannot lawfully be attacked by a terrorist group even if they...
Skytrax has released its annual list of the world's 10 best airlines. Here they are, from #1 down: Asiana Airlines Singapore Airlines Qatar Airways Cathay Pacific Air New Zealand Etihad Airways Qantas Emirates Thai Airways Malaysia Airlines Two things stand out. First, Asian and Australia/New Zealand dominate. I fly Air New Zealand and Qantas regularly, and think both are excellent. (Air New Zealand is better, as the ratings indicate.) I also...
[The following is a guest-post by Lt. Col. Jenks, the Chief of the International Law Branch in the Army's Office of the Judge Advocate General -- KJH] At a workshop held in Beirut earlier this month, officials from the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) attempted to explain the basis for the tribunal's in absentia provisions. At the same time, Judge...
The news coming out of China of ten suicide deaths at Foxconn industrial park is terribly distressing. All of the workers who committed suicide were recent high school or vocational training school graduates aged between 18 to 24. One of the fatalities, Sun Danyong, jumped to his death after being interrogated over a missing iPhone prototype. Foxconn,...
Do we have an emerging consensus that the ICC States-Parties should refrain from adding the crime of aggression to the ICC Statute at its upcoming conference in Kampala? Michael Glennon, the CFR, Harold Koh, David Kaye, and now Richard Goldstone have all come out against adding the crime of aggression. Here is Goldstone: Based on my experience as an international prosecutor,...
A couple of years ago, I blogged about how Salim Hamdan was prosecuted in a military commission for conspiring to commit the non-existent war crime "murder in violation of the law of war." Hamdan was acquitted on that count, but the crime is starring again in the unconscionable prosecution of child-soldier Omar Khadr. That's unfortunate in itself -- but what...
At the recent Northwestern Law School conference on the Israeli-Arab Dispute and International Law I had the good fortune to address one of the few bright spots in current Arab-Israeli relations. Most international law scholars of the Arab-Israeli conflict seem to know little about international trade, and focus almost exclusively on the laws of war in their discussion of Middle East...
So, Alan Dershowitz has decided that international law needs to be "delegitimized," because it is unfair to Israel. It is reasonable to consider, therefore, what Dershowitz believes a "fair" international law would allow Israel to do. Here is one of his suggestions, from a 2002 Jerusalem Post editorial entitled "New Response to Palestinian Terrorism" (emphasis mine): In light of the...
The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia has just held that JCE III, otherwise known as "extended" joint criminal enterprise, did not exist under customary international law during 1975-1979, the period over which the ECCC has temporal jurisdiction. The decision is a stunning rebuke to the ICTY, which invented -- literally out of thin air -- that form of...
I continue to believe that this is a terrible idea: Spain's top judicial panel had suspended Mr Garzon on Friday pending his trial on charges he exceeded his authority by ordering an investigation into mass killings by the forces of former dictator Francisco Franco. The suspension from his functions as a judge was widely thought in Spain...
There's a post that's been making the rounds in the science fiction blogosphere that warrants note by those interested in international law, especially in regards to issues of international trade, development, and regulation. The piece is by Ghanaian writer Jonathan Dotse and it concerns the rise of African cyberpunk. Before getting to Dotse's post, though, a couple of words on cyberpunk itself. Cyberpunk is...
As the smear campaign against Richard Goldstone gets ever more desperate, it seems opportune to provide a bit more information about Israel's support for apartheid, to which Goldstone's pales in comparison. Here is Sasha Polokow-Suransky again, this time responding to attacks on Goldstone by the Speaker of the Knesset and Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister: Goldstone's apartheid-era judicial rulings are undoubtedly a...
