Search: crossing lines
20 Feb Bush’s Indefensible Comments on Peacekeeping in Darfur
...law requiring every Rwandan to carry an ethnic identity card. The lines between Tutsi and Hutu, which traditionally had been porous and informal, suddenly became permanent and legalized. The ethnic identity card requirement persisted after Rwandan independence in 1960. Tragically, the continued presence of this requirement accelerated the genocide, insofar as persons unable to produce a Hutu card simply were slaughtered. In every other respect, however, President Bush’s response makes absolutely no sense. There is no question that the colonial powers often created ethnic divisions where previously there were none....05 Jul Weekday News Wrap: July 5, 2012
...the European Parliament voted on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, and, as expected, rejected it by a large majority. A WTO Subcommittee on Least Developed Countries has developed draft guidelines on lower accession criteria for the poorest nations. South Korea has submitted a proposal to the International Whaling Commission to resume scientific whaling in its waters. Many countries and environmental groups have denounced this proposal. The ICC’s Trial Chamber I will deliver its decisions regarding reparations to victims and sentencing in the Lubanga case next week (July 10). Reuters offers an...
18 Apr Symposium on International Conflict and Security Law: A Research Handbook – The Extra-Legal Foundations of International Conflict and Security Law: the Importance of Identifying Globally Protected Goods and Collective Interests
...foundational principle of the international legal order. The authors skillfully point to the substantive values which are involved in the rule of law when adapting its content to the field of international peace and security: compliance, transparency, and accountability of international decision-making. These values, which constitute the qualities required for a normative order to be stable, certain and predictable, are therefore essential to the consolidation of the international community. Both formally and substantially, the rule of law encompasses authoritative guidelines to limit the discretion of the authorities who are called...02 Jul Chevron Update/Profile in Washington Post
...but it is also about the business of financing lawsuits: When Patton Boggs signed onto the Ecuador case in early 2010 at the suggestion of a hedge fund looking into financing the litigation, it wrote a memorandum titled “Invictus” — borrowing the title of a 19th-century poem that culminates with the famous lines “I am the master of my fate/I am the captain of my soul.” In it, Patton Boggs outlined a strategy to pursue international Chevron assets to enforce the $18.2 billion judgment, “with the ultimate goal of effecting...12 Jul Charnovitz on NGOs
...legal scene. Continuity is the message. To the extent that there has been recent change, it is not in the way of a revolution but rather of a “reformation” – “a return to an earlier doctrine so as to clear away errors, such as the excessive state-centricity of positivist orthodoxy.” The piece makes the best case that can be made along those lines. It is rich in its documentation of the early and mid-twentieth century literature on NGOs (including in the first volume of the AJIL itself), for which purposes...03 Aug The Relevancy of Diplomacy
...But we also remember those who made a difference to the organization and the US relationship with it, e.g., Richard Holbrooke. Holbrooke made a difference at the UN beyond what the administration might have envisioned for the job. He directly and successfully lobbied across party lines to get Congress to pay US arrears to the UN. He succeeded in part through sheer force of personality, in part through convincing the Hill that paying the dues would be central to the US ability to clean up some of the messes at...16 Nov The Sovereigntist Premise of Hathaway and Shapiro’s Outcasting
...The “shared understandings” of statehood are morphing so as to shrink the spaces of sovereign insulation. To paraphrase Wendt, sovereignty is what states make of it, and states’ identity as such has come to comprehend a downsized version. There are lots of ways in which international law is degrading sovereignty. I think it’s possible now to imagine the internal enforcement of international law along the lines of the Modern State Conception — not all advocates of international law “tend to let the conversation drop at this point.” (276). The construction...
25 May Affective Justice Symposium: International Justice in Africa–Not All That Simple
...longing for the old days would keep people poor: what we were observing was development, progress. Indeed, this was what we were here to bring. Rid the government of its criminal leaders, plug the country into the world economy and teach the Sudanese how to run a country. What was I doing here if I did not believe we could help fix the place? It was all so simple. I do not recall the lines of my response, but they included the colonial encounter (the most symbolic of which, between...17 Apr Jennifer Trahan’s Cambodia Problem
...the possibility of the appointment of a group of experts to evaluate the existing evidence and propose further measures, as a means of bringing about national reconciliation, strengthening democracy and addressing the issue of individual accountability.” The group of experts recommended the UN create an ad hoc tribunal along the lines of the ICTY and ICTR, but Cambodia favoured a more internationalized tribunal based in its own judicial system. Cambodia thus asked the UN to help it draft legislation for such a tribunal. In response, “the Secretary-General entered into negotiations...