The OPCD has filed its formal response to Libya's admissibility challenge. It's a monster of a brief -- 92 pages -- so it will take a number of posts to deal with it adequately. In this first post, I want to pull together the various sections of the brief that provide unprecedented detail concerning Melinda Taylor's detention. Before I do,...
Add another name to the list of scientists that understand global warming is both real and the product of human activity. Come on down Richard A. Muller: CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research...
According to research conducted by Jay Brown of theRacetotheBottom.org, blogs have been cited in "law reviews, journals, and other legal publications" more than 6300 times -- a nearly fourteen-fold increase since 2006. Here are the 10 most-cited faculty law blogs: 1. Volokh Conspiracy -- 742 cites 2. Balkinization -- 426 cites 3. Patently O -- 393 cites 4. Concurring Opinions -- 279 cites 5. Sentencing...
According to the Washington Post, Phakiso Mochochoko, the head of the Jurisdiction, Complementarity and Cooperation Division in the Office of the Prosecutor at the ICC, said the following in response to Stephen Rapp's recent comments about the potential criminal liability of the Rwandan government for its support of Bosco Ntaganda's M23 in the Congo (emphasis added): The International Criminal Court is...
Although clearly a step up from its genocidal predecessor, Kagame's government in Rwanda is anything but progressive. According to the State Department, the government is responsible for -- inter alia -- illegal detention, torture, enforced disappearance, attempted assassinations of political opponents, restrictions on the freedom of speech and press, violence toward journalists and human rights advocates, discrimination against women/children/gays and...
This may be a bit inside baseball for most, but the Pre-Trial Chamber issued an interesting decision yesterday regarding the Office of Public Counsel for the Defence's formal response to Libya's admissibility challenge. According to the PTC, the OPCD wanted some of the information contained in its response to remain confidential not only in perpetuity, but also ex parte. In...
It looks increasingly likely. Mali has formally self-referred the situation in the country to the ICC and the OTP has already opened a formal preliminary investigation. Here is yesterday's statement from Fatou Bensouda: Today I received a delegation from the Government of Mali led by the Minister of Justice, H.E. Malick Coulibaly. The delegation transmitted a letter by which the Government...
I want to call readers' attention to David Frakt's excellent essay on direct participation in hostilities as a war crime. Here is the abstract: This article addresses, in part, the question of what to do with civilian direct participants in hostilities who are not killed by opposing armed forces, but are captured. Specifically, the article address the potential criminal prosecution of...
A recurring criticism of the ICC is that it has little to show for its first 10 years -- just one conviction -- and has cost an inordinate amount of money. Here, for example, are the opening paragraphs of Eric Posner's recent attack on the Court in the Wall Street Journal, entitled "The Absurd International Criminal Court": Ten years ago, on...
As the rare American legal academic who has both a JD and a PhD in law (the latter, of course, from a law school outside the U.S.), I think this is an exciting development, for all the reasons that Jason Mazzone laid out nicely last year at Balkinization. I imagine Yale's PhD will be very popular, particularly given that the...
The Independent has the story: European governments, including Britain's, have received legal opinion from a leading international counsel who argues they would be fully within their rights to ban trade with Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. The formal opinion from James Crawford, professor of international law at Cambridge University, is likely to inject fresh momentum into campaigns in the United...
Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, the first person convicted at the ICC, has been sentenced to fourteen years in prison. From the Court's press release: Today, Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court (ICC) sentenced Thomas Lubanga Dyilo to a total period of 14 years of imprisonment. The Chamber, composed of Judge Adrian Fulford, Judge Elizabeth Odio Benito and Judge René Blattmann,...
