Not surprisingly, conservatives and the Obama administration are falling all over themselves to praise Paul Clement for his brave willingness to represent the House of Representatives at the low, low rate of $520.00 per hour -- practically pro bono. The idea that zealous representation is an end in itself, regardless of client or cause, is one of the most basic...
At Lawfare today, Ben Wittes criticizes King & Spalding for refusing to help the House of Representatives defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in court. His argument turns on an analogy between representing the House and representing Gitmo detainees: Sometimes, the politically unpopular client is the House of Representatives, not a Guantanamo detainee. Sometimes, the contested legal questions...
That question is raised by the ICC's investigation of the post-election violence in Kenya, which included a number of forcible circumcisions of Luo men. According to IRIN Africa, although the OPT originally alleged that the forcible circumcision qualified as the crime against humanity "other form of sexual violence" under Article 7(1)(g) of the Rome Statute, the Pre-Trial Chamber reclassified the...
Publicly, Israel has been nothing but critical of the Goldstone Report. Netanyahu responded to Goldstone's recent partial retraction, for example, by calling for the "twisted and nonfactual" Report to be thrown "into the dustbin of history." Behind the scenes, however, Israel has taken a different approach. According to the Jewish Press, the Report has led the IDF to adopt some very...
The San Francisco Chronicle has the story: The conference, titled "Litigating Palestine," took place at the San Francisco campus March 25 and 26. The 13 speakers - four of them Jewish, according to a school official - discussed legal issues and court cases involving Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, protests, consumer boycotts and related...
According to the Prosecutor, he needs 421 days to review 12,900 pages of documents that the Pre-Trial Chamber recently ordered him to disclose to the Ocampo Six so they can prepare for their confirmation hearings: International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has told the court he needs 421 days to review the evidence to comply with orders given last...
My school is once again advertising for new faculty at all levels, from Lecturer to Professor. Note the short deadline: applications must be in by April 27. Here is the job description: Melbourne Law School, Australia's first all-graduate law faculty, invites applications for continuing appointments from creative legal scholars committed to educational innovation. We continue to seek new colleagues at...
As readers will recall, I wrote a short response to Gabriella Blum's wonderful essay on IHL and common-but-differentiated responsibilities for our inaugural Opinio Juris-Harvard International Law Journal symposium. HILJ has now published my much longer formal response. Here is an overview, from my introduction: Blum’s normative analysis of the desirability of CDRs in IHL is exceptionally...
Luis Moreno-Ocampo wants to formally investigate crimes against humanity in Cote D'Ivoire. Cote D'Ivoire consented to the ICC's jurisdiction over crimes committed there eight years ago. So what's Moreno-Ocampo waiting for? Apparently, a state referral: "We are concerned about the recent information on massive atrocities committed in the western part of Cote d'Ivoire," he said. "We are trying to...
The following is a guest post by Anna Dolidze, a JSD candidate at Cornell Law School. In 2007-08, Dolidze was an Albert Podell Global Scholar at Risk at New York University Law School and a Visiting Fellow at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute. She has worked for a number of international organizations, including for Save...
This time concerning the Goldstone Report and whether Israel intentionally targeted civilians during Operation Cast Lead as a matter of policy. You know a post is in trouble when it's entitled "Human Rights Watch Lies re: Goldstone Retraction," but then states, three paragraphs later, "Well, maybe lying isn’t quite right. Roth chose his words carefully, and I suppose...
The Kenyan government has filed a 30-page motion with the ICC's Pre-Trial Chamber II arguing that recent improvements to the Kenyan criminal-justice system render the cases against the Ocampo Six inadmissible. Here are the highlights of the reforms, from the motion's introduction (para. 2): 2. The Government's Application must be determined with a full understanding of the fundamental and far-reaching constitutional...
