The New York Times and Washington Post (and lots of other places) report today (Saturday, September 20, 2008) that the two senior executives of the Human Rights Watch Americas Division, executive director Jose Miguel Vivanco and deputy director Daniel Wilkinson, were detained by Venezuelan security personnel in Caracas and placed on a plane to Brazil. From the NYT: Armed men in uniforms...
We've spent a lot of time here at Opinio Juris on the implications of the Supreme Court's Medellin decision. Very little of that discussion, however, has considered the decision's impact on the Senate's role in U.S. treaty-making. That may be because the Court itself spent so little time on the Senate. It did recognize that the intent of the Senate,...
This past month I received an email sent to over 60 law professors inviting us to join an amicus brief. The case is before the D.C. Circuit and involves the important issue of corporate responsibility for human rights violations under international law. The email was sent at approximately midnight on a Monday night and invited a distinguished group...
Two months ago, I predicted that the Security Council would not have the votes necessary to defer the ICC's prosecution of Bashir. Nostradamus I'm not: In a last-ditch attempt to prevent ICC judges from issuing an arrest warrant for Bashir in the next few weeks, Bashir's supporters - the Arab League, the African Union, China and Russia - will use the...
I had the pleasure this past Friday to moderate a conference at Pepperdine on social entrepreneurship that featured Matt Flannery, co-founder of Kiva, one of the leading microfinance organizations on the Internet. There is so much I could say about Kiva and Flannery's remarks, but let me just highlight a few points that were raised by his discussion. First, the...
Spiegel Online has posted a fascinating interview with Rafi Eitan, a former Mossad agent who is now a minister in the Israeli cabinet. According to Eitan, Mengele was also in Buenos Aires when Eichmann was captured -- and would have shared Eichmann's fate but for the Mossad's lack of boots on the ground: SPIEGEL: Josef Mengele fled Germany for South America...
I don't watch television, so I wouldn't actually know, but I take it there was some sort of dustup in a Sarah Palin ABC interview in which Governor Palin was asked about the so-called Bush Doctrine. I don't know exactly what the discussion was about, but I did get an email from a friend a little while ago that said,...
I hereby nominate all Kenyans for US citizenship: All 22 countries in a BBC World Service poll would prefer Democratic nominee Barack Obama elected US president instead of his Republican rival John McCain. Obama is preferred by a four to one margin on average across the 22,000 people polled. The margin in favour of Obama ranges from just 9 per cent in...
More than two years after his acquittal was confirmed by the ICTR Appeals Chamber, Rwanda's former Minister of Education, Andre Rwamakuba, is no longer a virtual prisoner in a UN safehouse in Arusha: Former Rwandan Education Minister Andre Rwamakuba ( 58) has joined his family at Vaud, Switzerland after spending two years in Arusha, seat of the International Criminal Tribunal for...
On behalf of all of us at Opinio Juris I would like to thank Tom Farer for joining us this week in the first Oxford University Press/ Opinio Juris book symposium to discuss his new book Confronting Global Terrorism and American Neo-Conservatism: The Framework of a Liberal Grand Strategy. We would also like to thank Kristen Boon and Mark Shulman for joining us...
Ken, since I have commitments most of today, I can answer only briefly and perhaps a little too abruptly, the surprising, even astonishing remarks in your last post, remarks so surprising, given their source, that I am wondering whether someone pretending to be you actually made the post. Let’s begin with the granular. In my post on the Israeli-Palestine conflict I...
I want to thank Tom for participating in this discussion; I have re-read the book as we have had this discussion, and it has provided great illumination on what the text is about. I have learned a great deal from the discussion and from the book. I apologize for coming late with this entry; it was hard to get to...
