Just to follow up on Chris' post on Iran's new leader. Ordinarily, the former hostages might have been able to sue the new Iranian prez in U.S. courts under the Alien Tort Statute. But they would face innumerable obstacles including a 10-year statute of limitations. But most importantly, it appears that the 1981 Algiers Accords, which resulted in...
CNN reports that several former hostages of the 444-day US embassy hostage crisis in Iran believe that Iranian president-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as one of their captors. Other reports stated that he was believed to have acted in a capacity akin to chief of security for the hostage-takers. The aides of the president-elect have denied the allegations and former...
Some folks get excited about "global governance" and "world government". But while there are some trends toward global integration in the form of free trade and greater international cooperation, I sometimes think the more likely trend will be toward regional integration. The recent setbacks for the EU notwithstanding, regionalism is more likely to occur because of competition from...
Just in time for beach reading season, I have just posted to SSRN my newest article, Resolving Treaty Conflicts, which is coming out in the George Washington International Law Review. I grapple with the question of what States should do when they are signatories to multiple treaties (such as, say, a trade agreement and an environmental agreement) that frustrate each...
In an important decision on treaty interpretation and the political question doctrine, the D.C. Circuit yesterday affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by a number of Korean, Taiwanese, and Filipino women who alleged rape, torture, and other abuse at the hands of Japanese soldiers during World War II. The lawsuit was brought under the Alien Tort Statute and had...
A U.N. Commission of Experts has recommended that the Security Council push Indonesia to re-open trials of individuals suspected of committing war crimes in the Timor-Leste (East Timor). Indonesia has conducted prosecutions via an ad hoc tribunal, but according to the commission, these prosecutions were little more than sham trials.I haven't seen the report which is not available online,...
This very interesting piece from the St. Louis Post Dispatch notes that the U.S. is obligated to announce its measures for implementation of a March WTO decision requiring cotton subsidy cuts by Friday (July 1) and that many cotton farmers are understandably nervous about the expected cuts.This may make the WTO seem fairly powerful, but in reality, the U.S. could...
The reference library at the UN has sent out an announcement stating:Dag Hammarskjöld Library at the UN Headquarters in New York is announcing the creation of a new blog called “UN Pulse: Connecting to UN Information.”The blog focuses on just-released UN system-wide online information, major reports, publications and documents and we have included a category called “International Law.” Created and...
David Bosco, the Senior Editor of Foreign Policy Magazine and an international lawyer, has a thoughtful piece on John Bolton in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. I think it is worth reading by Bolton apologists and critics alike because it gets away from the heated rhetoric from both sides and uses the Bolton nomination to ask some tough questions...
This report from Agence France Press suggests that the U.S. has broken new ground in admitting to torture when it filed its report to the Committee Against Torture, a report that is required by the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT). Here is the triumphant reaction by UN officials:'They are no longer trying...
Wow! According to this survey, China is more popular among the public in 16 Western European countries than the U.S. This proves that anti-Americanism is remarkably widespread and deep in Europe. And it also suggests that the public, even in liberal democratic Western Europe, don't care very much about human rights violations, as long as they occur in other countries...
While Japan has been scheming to overturn IWC limitations on its whaling activities, it has also been finding new ways to annoy its neighbors. The most hilarious of these is Japan's attempt to establish Okinotori, an uninhabited series of rocks/islands in the Pacific. Japan has done this by assigning Okinotori a Tokyo address thereby making it part of the municipality...
