In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Now That’s What I Call Engagement: Sudan Seeks to Hire Washington Lobbyists

14 Oct

The Washington Post reports that a prominent Democratic fundraiser and close ally of Senator John Kerry (chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee) is seeking to be permitted to lobby on behalf of the current Sudanese government.  This may seem a little weird, and even morally distasteful, but it is another logical consequence of the engagement strategy.  As the hopeful...

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10 Oct

I have no expertise in this area, so I'm not going to opine on the legality of Zelaya's ouster.  Two things, however, are worth noting.  First, the report that Julian mentions was not written by the Congressional Research Service -- a mistake that others on the right have made.  It was written by the Law Library of Congress.  Second, the...

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10 Oct

Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina weighs in today with a WSJ oped blasting the Obama Administration's policy toward Honduras. Putting aside the merits of DeMint's analysis for the time being, I found his oped interesting for two reasons: one having to do with DeMint's somewhat sketchy actions, and the other with Harold Koh's potentially sketchy legal advice. 1) "One Voice"? DeMint is...

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09 Oct

This video from Anne Bayefsky of the Human Rights Council meetings on the Goldstone Report is fascinating (though I am not on board with her over-the-top attack on Goldstone personally).   But note the indiscriminate and  deeply hypocritical use of the words "genocide," "war crimes," and "crimes against humanity" by the least morally attractive member states of the HRC (How...

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07 Oct

While I agree with Julian that the interplay of law and politics on questions of statehood can lead to difficult questions, I think his declaration that “we still don’t know when a state is a state,” does more to obscure the issues than actually give a clear picture as to how law and politics affect each other. First of all,...

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06 Oct

Assuming that the other Circuits follow suit, Roger is almost certainly right that the Second Circuit's recent decision in Talisman Energy "will be the death knell for most corporate liability claims under the Alien Tort Statute."  That's regrettable in itself.  What's particularly regrettable, though, is that the Second Circuit still has no idea what it's talking about when it comes...

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01 Oct

Well, I don't know that for sure yet -- I only just got in from the airport an hour ago. But it sure is beautiful this time of year. I am here for what looks to be a great conference -- the first academic forum (i.e., workshop) jointly organized by the American Society of International Law and the European Society...

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29 Sep

I just wanted to note that I have posted to SSRN The Language of Law and the Practice of Politics: Great Powers and the Rhetoric of Self-Determination in the Cases of Kosovo and South Ossetia, which is part of the special issue of the Chicago Journal of International Law about great power politics to which Ken has referred a couple of times....

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29 Sep

Another classic by the Sudanese government: Ismail also accused Israel of being behind aggravation and continuation of the Darfur crisis, saying "a group of Darfurians have recently admitted that they have provided the International Criminal Court (ICC) with false evidences, which support our assurances that there are Zionist trends behind aggravation of the Darfur crisis and undermining of the stability in...

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28 Sep

When I wrote my critique of the Jerusalem Post editorial on the ICC, I also sent a short letter to the editor pointing out the editorial's basic factual errors.  It was a very straightforward letter -- no politics, just indisputably true facts such as that the ICTY and the ICC are different institutions. It's been more than a week, and the...

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