I figure it's never too late to catch up on some of last week's April 1 reporting. The Harvard Law Record got a great "scoop" with this story: Speaking to a lunch seminar held by the National Security Law Association, Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was shocked to discover that the term “self-executing”...
So, it turns out that the US military was lying through its teeth when it claimed that the three Afghan women murdered during a "bungled" Special Operations attack in Afghanistan six weeks ago were not killed by NATO -- read: American -- forces: NATO military officials had already admitted killing two innocent civilians — a district prosecutor and local police...
Happy Easter, everyone! I recognize this is a bit of an unpleasant topic to bring up on a holy day, but it is worth noting that the rumblings about litigation against the Vatican and the Pope over the various child-sex-abuse scandals continue. Lawyers in the UK are actively researching how and whether to bring legal action during the Pope's upcoming...
Genocide is one of those phrases with both highly potent political ramifications as well as highly complicated legal requirements. These two characteristics, GUÉNAËL METTRAUX argues in the IHT, make the obsessive focus on whether something is or is not a genocide (Armenia? Srebenica?) a largely hopeless and unhelpful exercise for historical events. The very proposition that legal concepts such as genocide could...
I love Foreign Policy's blog, Passport. Along with Democracy Arsenal, it's one of the two best blogs for analysis of (duh) US foreign policy. Which is why I was shocked to read a recent post by Andrew Swift entitled "Is Karl Rove a War Criminal?", because Swift's analysis would make a first-year law student blush in embarrassment. Here is how...
This is probably just posturing, but it would be a rather dramatic turn of events if the IWC ended up a casualty of the vociferous Australian campaign against Japanese whaling. I see the Kiwis are trying to play mediator. The international body to control whaling worldwide could collapse if a deal cannot be reached to allow restricted commercial whaling, New Zealand's...
When the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber approved the Prosecutor's request for authority to investigate alleged "crimes against humanity" in Kenya, I didn't notice this long and powerful dissenting opinion (around p. 84) by one of the judges (Hans-Peter Kaul). The standard for authorizing an investigation is pretty easy to satisfy (at least it sounds that way to me), so the dissent...
Interesting discussion of innovative ways to deal with Haiti's long-term problems. Haiti is very close to a failed state. So it's time to think big. Here are four out of the box choices: 1) A New Haitian Constitution; 2) UN Trusteeship; 3) U.S. Protectorate; 4) U.S. annexation and status as a territory. Read the whole article. I actually think that...
This is not surprising, although I doubt they have much a legal basis to resist enforcement. Ecuadorean officials are rejecting an international arbitration tribunal's ruling that it violated international law and must pay $700 million to the ChevronCorp. President Rafael Correa's administration is analyzing options for appeal under national and international law, Attorney General Diego Garcia said in a statement Wednesday. "This new effort...
Add another African case to the ICC's docket. The International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, has given its prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo the green light to investigate the role of senior politicians in Kenya's post-election violence that killed 1,300 Kenyans in 2008. The decision allows Mr. Ocampo to take the next step, which would be passing down indictments against senior Kenyan politicians, some...
Fascinating speech by Andrew Shapiro, Assistant Secretary for Political-Military Affairs at the U.S. State Department on U.S. government views on counter-piracy policy. Of special interest, the U.S. may try changing the law on prosecuting pirates. How exactly to do that is a bit unclear (treaty? custom?), but it seems like a promising avenue. At least it is a new idea,...
NGO Monitor loves to criticize progressive NGOs for a lack of transparency concerning their funding. A recent report, for example, predictably attacks Human Rights Watch for not identifying all of its donors, particularly those at last year's fundraising event in Saudi Arabia: HRW publishes the names and amounts provided by some of its donors, but others remain hidden. Although HRW...
