As the Washington Post notes, the Obama administration has authorized the CIA to assassinate Aulaqi wherever he is found. It is very unlikely that CIA agents qualify as lawful combatants -- they don't distinguish themselves from the civilian population, they don't carry their arms openly, etc. So, let's assume that CIA agents manage to kill Aulaqi in Afghanistan. I assume...
That's what Rob Crilly claims in an editorial today in the Telegraph: Before he was indicted, Bashir told regional leaders and his confidantes that he was ready to step down: after 20 years in office, he was ready for a holiday, and retirement to a smart new villa in the north of Khartoum. Now, fearing arrest by a...
The American Society of International Law recently awarded its annual certificates and prizes for scholarship in international law. A number of the winners have either been involved in OJ symposia or are friends of the blog, so I want to acknowledge their achievements here: Certificate of Merit in a specialized area of international law: Mark Osiel, "The End of Reciprocity: Terror,...
So, it turns out that the US military was lying through its teeth when it claimed that the three Afghan women murdered during a "bungled" Special Operations attack in Afghanistan six weeks ago were not killed by NATO -- read: American -- forces: NATO military officials had already admitted killing two innocent civilians — a district prosecutor and local police...
I love Foreign Policy's blog, Passport. Along with Democracy Arsenal, it's one of the two best blogs for analysis of (duh) US foreign policy. Which is why I was shocked to read a recent post by Andrew Swift entitled "Is Karl Rove a War Criminal?", because Swift's analysis would make a first-year law student blush in embarrassment. Here is how...
There is an old adage that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged. The rejoinder is that a liberal is a conservative who has been indicted. Speaking of which, an intriguing development in the case of the Christian terrorists: All members of the anti-government Hutaree group, who wanted to start a violent revolution against the government...
NGO Monitor loves to criticize progressive NGOs for a lack of transparency concerning their funding. A recent report, for example, predictably attacks Human Rights Watch for not identifying all of its donors, particularly those at last year's fundraising event in Saudi Arabia: HRW publishes the names and amounts provided by some of its donors, but others remain hidden. Although HRW...
Forgive the self-promotion, but I was just sent the cover of my co-edited book (with Markus Dubber, who teaches at Toronto), and I think it's really cool. The Handbook, which will be published in November by Stanford University Press, is the first edited book on comparative substantive criminal law. It contains seventeen chapters -- 16 chapters on the...
AP reports that a Dutch court of appeals has affirmed a lower court ruling that held the UN could not be sued for its failure to protect Bosnian civilians in Srebrenica: Appeals judges have ruled that relatives of victims of Europe's worst massacre since World War II cannot sue the United Nations for compensation in a Dutch court. Lawyers for...
David Bernstein links today to an article in The Times -- a right-wing British newspaper published by Rupert Murdoch -- attacking Human Rights Watch. The article is breathlessly entitled "Nazi Scandal Engulfs Human Rights Watch," which I have to admit piqued my curiousity -- until I realized that the "Nazi scandal" concerned Marc Gelasco, a research analyst who resigned from...
I've long thought that any scholar who wants to maintain his or her credibility should stay far away from the US government, no matter which party is in power. Harold Koh is a case in point. Others have highlighted his problematic testimony about targeted killing, which continued to maintain the Bush administration's fictions --...
Every time that I teach international criminal law, at least one student writes on whether you could prosecute the Burmese junta for crimes against humanity. As a matter of substantive ICL, the answer is clearly yes. The problem is jurisdictional -- who is going to prosecute them? Apparently, the UK thinks it should be the ICC via a Security Council...
