In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Search: {search_term_string}

18 Apr

...about that inconvenient fact; will the ICC? Martin Holtermann may be right — the ICC may simply defer to Ukraine’s President and Parliament. But I can help but think it would be unseemly for an international court like the ICC to simply ignore a clear judgment issued by the highest court in a state purporting to accept its jurisdiction. At the very least, Fatou Bensouda should take the Ukraine’s internal conflict into account when she decides whether to open a formal investigation — you can bet that any suspect wanted...
18.04.14 | |

27 Sep

The common refrain of constitutional comparativists is that foreign experiences offer persuasive authority that may serve as a useful guide to judges in their constitutional decision-making. The idea is, as Justice Breyer has argued, that since all modern democracies are facing the same basic problems and are searching for the same basic answers, why not examine how other constitutional courts have addressed the problem? Jeremy Waldron analogizes the process of citation to foreign authority as akin to scientific investigation, in which scientific findings represent a repository of enormous value that...
27.09.07 | |

13 Sep

...missery wages. Thus, people leave in search of a better life. Once they get here and to europe, they still get all the crumbs. It is no surprise then to hear that Mexicans and Central americans are a source of cheap labor. Now you are proposing to allow a certain number of migrants in exchange for access to our financial and service sector (not that Merril Lynch is abscent of these markets). How about those foreign companies there, pay the same wages that what they pay here (bye bye cheap...
13.09.07 | |

08 Oct

his analysis in this context is consistent with Article 9 of the Draft Articles on the Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts. See also an AJIL article referenced in Ken Anderson's post at Lawfare (trackback link below). Note that "responsibility" in this context does not necessarily entail pecuniary liability. (3) Others less favorably disposed to drone attacks have asserted that extraterritorial law enforcement measures are a justified countermeasure in these circumstances. One does not get to countermeasures without state responsibility for an internationally wrongful act. If you agree that...
08.10.12 | |

11 Jun

...the Geneva Conventions, anyone not determined to be a POW under the Third Convention is a "civilian" by definition. This may be a perfectly servicable definition when used to determine which GC applies to a group of detainees. That is all this definition is good for. Unfortunately, many types of people who are clearly not "civilians" in any normal use of the word, or by any prior legal decision, are defined as civilians for the purpose of the GC. The eight German saboteurs in Quirin did not qualify as POWs,...
11.06.07 | |

06 Jul

...living and working in this country lawfully. Under the Immigration & Nationality Act, an alien (that is the legal term) is eligible for Adjustment of Status on various different grounds, but for my example I will take the Software Engineer sponsored by his employer while living and working in Phoenix, Arizona. This Software Engineer entered the United States in H1B status and is sponsored by his employer who has completed both the first and second stages of this process and is able to proceed to the last stage, the filing...
06.07.10 | |

29 Oct

Patrick S. O'Donnell The search for cheaper markets: in land, labor, what have you, is not surprising and will be a mixed blessing for those countries where they're located. Of course "who owns what" will, once more, be telling.... Several titles in my latest bibliography. "mass media: politics, political economy and law," deal with some of the subject matter broached and implicated in this post. Please see: http://ratiojuris.blogspot.com/2010/10/mass-media-politics-political-economy.html Nathan Dunford I know that China has been heavily involved in Africa through aid and building infrastructure. They have made huge efforts...
29.10.10 | |

16 Jun

...term on Sunday with an election victory that allows him to continue peace talks with Marxist guerrillas to end a half-century war. President Barack Obama has said that the United States will not be sending its troops back to Iraq, but is reviewing other options to assist the Iraqi government threatened by an advancing armed group. UN/Other Nuclear-armed states are modernizing their arsenals and appear determined to keep sizable numbers of such weapons of mass destruction for the foreseeable future, the SIPRI think-tank said in its annual report on Monday....
16.06.14 | |

03 Oct

nearly ten years before inspectors noticed there was anything wrong. [....] What does clinical research look like when everyone is in it for the money? For a start, it looks a lot less like science. ‘I do not do original research; I do contract research,’ says a private physician-researcher in Medical Research for Hire. A contract researcher does not come up with original ideas, or design research protocols, or analyse research results, or write them up for scientific publications. All of this is done by the pharmaceutical company or its...
03.10.10 | |

26 Feb

Dawood I. Ahmed "Indeed, such treaties can often be counterproductive to domestic reformers who lose some credibility by being too closely associated with foreign and international powers" - true for most Muslim majority countries too. I wonder if others here are aware of empirical research, whether based on case studies or otherwise, demonstrating this point? Patrick S. O'Donnell The treaties are no longer "too closely associated with foreign and international powers" if the country in question, in this case China, ratify them. Compare, for example, the use by Charter 77...
26.02.13 | |

19 Sep

...jus ad bellum -- a point made in 19 J. Trnasnat'l L. & Pol'y 237, 270-71 (2010). As that writing notes, a state is not always at war when a state uses force in self-defense in the territory of another state merely against non-state actor armed attackers. Quondam Cardozan Internet attacks are basically sabotage, not direct attacks. I'm sure that there's doctrine differentiating the two in terms of the level of licit response under proportionality, but a quick search of Google Books turned up nothing. Might be an interesting question....
19.09.12 | |

19 Jan

...prosecute an individual suspected of torture. Here is a passage from Chris Ingelse’s book The UN Committee Against Torture: An Assessment: Article 7, par. 2 grants the authorities a discretionary power in terms of whether or not they prosecuted a suspect of torture. The Committee confirmed — in abstract terms — that the discretionary power was not unlimited and could not be determined on the grounds of national law only. In any event, the discretionary power could not extend as far as to allow those responsible for torture to escape...
19.01.09 | |