For the non-twitterati, Omar al-Bashir has -- unsurprisingly -- cancelled his trip to the UN. That decision reflects an underappreciated "soft power" aspect of the ICC: even an unexecuted arrest warrant limits the freedom of a suspect facing charges. There may be no reasonable prospect of Bashir being arrested anytime soon. But there is also no reasonable prospect that he...
Ryan has a fascinating but problematic post today at Just Security in which he takes international-law scholars to task for opportunistically flip-flopping on whether the US is involved in an armed conflict with al-Qaeda. Here is the crux of his argument, taken from the post's introductory paragraph: Those arguments have been inconsistent with regard to one fundamental legal question: whether the...
Just Security is officially up and running. The lineup of contributors is amazing: the Editors-in-Chief are Steve Vladeck and Ryan Goodman; the Executive Editors are Mary deRosa, the ACLU's Jameel Jaffer, Fionnuala Ni Aolian, and Beth Van Schaack; and the Founding Editors are too numerous too mention but all extremely well known. (I won't play favorites by naming some of...
Eric Posner has a new Cassandra column at Slate, this latest one foretelling the doom of the ICC. There isn't much point in disagreeing with his basic thesis; no one knows at this point -- not him, not I -- whether the ICC will succeed. It is possible, however, to take issue with a number of assertions that Posner makes in...
In today's weekly news wrap, Jessica flagged an article that said Saif was due to appear in court in Tripoli for the beginning of the pre-trial phase of the case against him, al-Senussi, and 36 (!) other defendants. The article was inaccurate, and was later updated to make clear that Saif was appearing in Zintan on unrelated charges -- not...
According to Reuters, the US is dropping hints that it will grant Omar al-Bashir a visa to travel the UN for the annual meeting of the General Assembly: A senior State Department official said Bashir would "not receive a warm welcome" if he were to travel to the U.N. meeting. The official said Bashir had applied for a visa to attend...
Does anyone have a copy of Bin Cheng's article "International Law in the United Nations," 8 Yearbook of World Affairs 170 (1954)? It's not available online, and our library doesn't have that journal...
On both twitter and the blog, readers seem to have inferred from my previous post that I'm somehow disappointed that the US-Russia chemical-weapons deal does not automatically allow force for noncompliance. I suppose that's my fault; I tend to assume when I write that readers have at least some prior knowledge of my politics. So let me be clear: I am...
That's the tally in light of the deal that has been reached regarding Syria's chemical weapons. The US position was that any agreement had to permit the use of force against Syria in case of noncompliance. But the US-Russian deal simply calls for the Security Council to consider the consequences of noncompliance under Chapter VII; it does not commit the...
Apparently not, because yesterday's war propaganda editorial by Sebastian Junger beating the drum for attacking Syria is just spectacularly awful. I've been out of the fisking game for a while, but the editorial simply can't pass unmentioned. Every war I have ever covered — Kosovo, Bosnia, Sierra Leone and Liberia — withstood all diplomatic efforts to end it until Western military action...
Can anyone point me toward a good discussion -- historical and/or theoretical, preferably both -- of the ability (or inability) of the Security Council to adopt resolutions that are binding on states that are not members of the UN?...
Andrew Cayley, the co-international prosecutor, has resigned effective next week: British national Andrew Cayley told VOA that it was no secret he was planning to resign this year, but said he was leaving now for personal and professional reasons. He did not elaborate and said his resignation will not affect the ongoing prosecutions under his authority. Cayley’s departure, which is effective September...
