We here at Opinio Juris are planning to compile a list of what we consider to be “must reads” for anyone interested in international law. Until we build that part of the site, and because we have received some recent questions from readers as to what we would put in that category, I wanted to post an incomplete and somewhat...
Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSBlog has written a useful primer on the Guantanamo cases moving through the courts....
As I had already posted, the Prime Minister of Kosovo, Ramush Haradinaj, was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for his actions as a commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army. CNN is now running an informative update on Haradinaj’s not-guilty plea on 37 counts and on the case in general.In other ICTY news, Gojko Jankovic, a...
Scott Sullivan from Transatlantic Assembly has a very interesting post on first-person impressions of Guantanamo based on his recent trip there for a client representation. He also notes recent reports concerning possible attempts by the U.S. to interfere in the attorney-client relationship of the Guantanamo detainees....
A while back, Marty Lederman had posted a comment asking some probing questions on my post on the legality of the current Iraq War and on the bombing of Serbia by NATO during the Kosovo conflict (both available here). While a variety of other issues have come up in the last week, I didn’t want to let his questions go...
The International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia has indicted the Prime Minister of Kosovo, Ramush Haradinaj. Such a move had been rumored and Haradinaj had said that he would resign from office if indicted. On Tuesday he did just that. Although the substance of the indictment has not yet been made public; it is understood to stem from alleged incidents in...
According to recent reports, the U.S. is considering lowering the level of ire in its rhetoric towards Iran and even providing incentives to Iran (such as not blocking Iran’s bid to enter the WTO) for setting aside its attempts at constructing nuclear weapons. This turnabout of U.S. policy (see, by contrast, here) seems to be in response to calls by...
I recently posted about Saddam’s trial moving forward. Yesterday, one of the judges of the Iraqi Special Tribunal, Barwize Mohammed Mahmoud al-Merani, and his son were murdered. (News report is here.) The judge was also a leading Kurdish politician and his son was an attorney at the tribunal. Authorities believe they were killed by insurgents.This comes a day after the...
In discussing the Iraq War, many apologists for the Administration have picked up and discarded doctrines, methods of interpretation, and justifications, with alarming speed and with little concern for consistency. At the end of the day, if international legal rules concerning warfare are something they consider important, then they will have to enunciate a coherent view of what those rules...
Professor Geoff Manne of Lewis and Clark has written an interesting response to my previous post. The text of my post and his comment can be found here.He begins by stating:…hegemony IS internationalism, and thank god we're the hegemon. I don't say that out of some banal, jingoistic patriotism. I say that because in a (relatively) anarchical world, it...
So Douglas Feith doesn’t mind setting aside sovereignty at times. Other countries’ sovereignty, that is. And when the U.S. decides it should be set aside, without having to resort to U.N. approval.This is not internationalism, it’s just hegemony. By saying that Feith and the international law community may not have that many differences, Julian’s post makes a mole-hill out of...
Peggy’s post on ethical lawyering and the torture memos brings up some excellent points concerning the ethical responsibilities of all lawyers and government lawyers in particular. As she and David Luban point out, lawyers do not act in an ethical vacuum, but have certain responsibilities (most clearly exemplified in the ABA’s Model Rules) concerning how they act and the advice...
