In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Karadzic Prosecutors to Trial Chamber: “No, Thanks.” (Updated)

24 Sep

Seemingly more interested in placating victims groups than the judges who will determine Dr. Karadzic's guilt or innocence, prosecutors have refused to trim their monstrous and completely unworkable indictment: In written submissions released by the tribunal Tuesday, prosecutors say further cutting down their 11-count indictment against Karadzic to squeeze it into a year would prevent them presenting evidence encompassing all his...

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24 Sep

It's a great day to be teaching the powers of the Security Council to my international law class!  President Obama presided this morning over the Security Council meeting on non-proliferation, securing a 15-0 vote for UNSC resolution 1887, which aims to bolster the nuclear non-proliferation regime through strengthening the NPT, enforcing existing resolutions on North Korea and Iran, and...

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23 Sep

Over at Foreign Policy magazine's blog, Eric Posner has a brief, breezy column on differences, or not, between the Bush and Obama administrations on international law.  Fun, quick read, whether one agrees or not.  And events of the moment - the opening of the UN General Assembly, the UN confabs on things like climate change, the G-20 meetings, etc. -...

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22 Sep

As part of the backlash against the Goldstone Commission's recommendation that the Security Council refer the situation in Gaza to the ICC if Israel and Hamas do not conduct credible investigations of their crimes, the far-right Jerusalem Post published an editorial today entitled "Strange Justice: The ICC, Europe, and the World."  The editorial was ostensibly written by a Researcher at...

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19 Sep

What follows is a conference announcement by my friend Mark Osiel.  He welcomes -- indeed wants -- feedback.  I hope to attend and discuss the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber's indefensible dilution of Article 30's default knowledge mens rea to include dolus eventualis. Common Civility:  International Criminal Law as Cultural Hybrid Here’s a prospectus for a conference I’m trying to organize with two other...

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19 Sep

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner calls in the Financial Times for a tax on global financial transactions as a means of funding the currently moribund UN Millennium Development Goals.  It is an idea that has been floated repeatedly since the 1990s - sometimes with the emphasis on the tax itself as a means of deliberately slowing down and making more...

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17 Sep

The Trial Chamber in Karadzic has instructed the prosecution to reduce the scope of its indictment from monstrous and completely unworkable to somewhat less monstrous and somewhat less completely unworkable.  The result?  Victims groups burning judges and prosecutors (and my client) in effigy and threatening not to cooperate with the prosecution: Several hundred members of victims' associations have protested in front...

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17 Sep

The Crimes of War site has noted that Florence Hartmann has been convicted in the ICTY: The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia this week convicted a former official of contempt of court for disclosing the contents and effect of two confidential Appeals Chamber decisions. The Court found that Florence Hartmann, a French journalist and former spokesperson for the Prosecutor,...

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15 Sep

You can find all 574 pages of it here.  From the press release: The UN Fact-Finding Mission led by Justice Richard Goldstone on Tuesday released its long-awaited report on the Gaza conflict, in which it concluded there is evidence indicating serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law were committed by Israel during the Gaza conflict, and that Israel committed...

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14 Sep

Although often critical of Israel, I have always been sympathetic to Israeli claims that the UN Human Rights Council has deliberately appointed individuals to investigate conditions in the Palestinian territories who were either actually biased against Israel or who at least could not avoid the appearance of bias.  I was completely opposed, for example, to the HRC's decision to appoint...

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13 Sep

1. All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) It is a curious feature of international human rights that we are reluctant to speak about foundations. As Jacques Maritain put it with respect...

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