After more than a decade of legal wrangling, Chile has finally ratified the Rome Statute. Chile's accession means that every country in South America is now a member of the ICC -- a significant accomplishment. Congratulations, Chile!...
Most Court-watchers spent the day examining the Ricci case (a.k.a. the New Haven Firefighters' case), given its racial dimensions and the fact that Judge Sotomayor participated in the Second Circuit opinion that the Court overturned. I, however, was more interested to see that the Court granted certiorari today in another Sotomayor-related case, Abbott v. Abbott. This is the Fifth Circuit case I mentioned...
Events in Honduras occurred while I was in a plane on a long flight, so I do not have enough of a grasp of what the facts are, or appear to be, to offer an opinion. However, I wanted to note that, whatever they are exactly, they seem to have touched off an interesting, and not inconsequential debate, over what...
Update, July 3, 2009. The Economist of July 4, 2009 has a useful, short article on the EU's proposals for reforming global finance, "Divided by a Common Market." I will put up a separate post with some excerpts from the piece.) I spent the plane flights back and forth to Prague over the weekend mostly reading, uninterrupted and straight through, the...
The New York Times (along with much of the mainstream media) has "rediscovered" cyberwar of late (see here, here, here, and here). Today's story revives longstanding differences between Russian government proposals to regulate cyberwarfare by treaty versus existing U.S. preferences to place the issue in more informal law enforcement cooperation networks: Russia favors an international treaty along the lines of those negotiated for...
Moises Naim of Foreign Policy has an essay in the new issue called "Minilateralism: The magic number to get real international action." His piece has spawned reactions from the bloggers at FP.com. Naim's essay is the latest volley in a debate on "big" or "small" multilateral action should be; however, although he and other bloggers do a good job setting out the...
A quick update on the OTP's efforts to include genocide charges in Bashir's arrest warrant. Pre-Trial Chamber I has now granted leave to appeal the issue I've discussed before -- whether it misunderstood Article 58's "reasonable grounds" requirement when it rejected the genocide charges. It's a very defensive decision, almost certainly written by Judge Steiner, who is the only holdover from...
It seems likely that Spain is about drastically curtail its universal jurisdiction law--the law that had been used by Magistrate Baltasar Garzon to go after Augusto Pinochet--such that it really won't be universal jurisdiction at all. While some (many?) of my international law colleagues may view this as a step backwards, I welcome this adjustment as a prudent move that will foster...
So, it looks like Britney Spears may be back on the silver screen in the near future -- in a Holocaust movie: Spears...
Foreign Policy.com reports: "Cloture passed on a 65-31 vote," a Congressional source relays at 11:30am. "There was applause in the Senate gallery after the vote was announced. Republicans are threatening to exercise their right to use all 30 hours of floor debate before permitting a final vote, so Koh may not be formally confirmed until tomorrow." See also IntLawGrrls. Yesterday, by the...
[ Laura Dickinson is the Foundation Professor of Law, Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State University.] After three months of unwarranted delay, the cloture vote on State Department Legal Adviser nominee Dean Harold Hongju Koh is finally scheduled for tomorrow. (See Chris Borgen's post, here.) Predictably, critics on the right are gearing up with robocalls and email campaigns aimed at...
(Note from Ken: OJ has been very pleased to have Amos Guiora guest-blogging with us last week, offering a series of posts on the question of administrative detention in Israel, and how its legal and security system address the many complex questions raised. I raised to Amos a question about the role of the judiciary in Israel in counterterrorism operations,...
