In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Recent Posts

02 Jan

The Economist (subs req'd) recently ran this article about the effect of anti-Americanism on the European sales of American-based brands. An empirical examination by political scientists Peter Katzenstein (Cornell) and Bob Koehane (Princeton) reveals that far from suffering ill effects of anti-Americanism following the US invasion of Iraq, US-based brands are prospering in Europe. Indeed, the actual sales reflect a...

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02 Jan

In the traditional Message for the World Day of Peace message, Pope Benedict XVI had a number of important things to say about international institutions, nuclear disarmament, and armed conflict. He is extraordinarily critical of nuclear arms, describing governments that rely on nuclear arms for security as adopting a "baneful" and "fallacious" point of view. He appears to single out...

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02 Jan

If you go to Amazon and do a seach for "international law" and sort by "bestselling" you can quickly get a sense of what the public is buying in the field of international law. It appears the rankings change dramatically from day-to-day, (and the ranking function does not work perfectly) so this is just a snapshot. Without filtering for books...

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01 Jan

One of the more innovative and irreverent law blogs is now back online. As of yesterday, Underneath Their Robes is back up and running. The blog was taken offline abruptly in mid-November after it was revealed in The New Yorker that the blogger, David Lat, was a U.S. attorney in New Jersey. According to this report, he...

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01 Jan

The New York Times greets the arrival of 2006 with this lead story about UN efforts to revise the much maligned Human Rights Commission (it has counted among its members Sudan, Cuba, and Zimbabwe; Libya chaired it in 2003). Although I had earlier predicted (see here) UN hopes to have a new "Human Rights Council" in place by the end...

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01 Jan

Hope everyone had a happy new year! As we move into 2006, it seems a good time to reflect a bit on where we've been the last few years. A new report from the Human Security Centre at the University of British Columbia has been released that deals with a new concept in international relations theory known as "human security."...

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31 Dec

As some of you have noticed, my blogging has been very light as of late. As I mentioned in a prior post (I think), I am currently teaching a winter course at the University of the Netherlands Antilles on the Dutch Caribbean island of Curacao. The winter course is co-sponsored by Hofstra, the University of Baltimore, and Erasmus University...

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31 Dec

My vote for the most important international law case in December is the ECHR's decision in Xenides-Arestis v. Turkey. The decision is available here and the official press release is here.Arestis involved the deprivation of property rights as a result of the continuing division of Cyprus and the Turkish occupation of northern Cyprus. Arestis is a Greek-Cypriot who lives in...

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30 Dec

As reported here, Ricardo Miguel Cavallo, a.k.a. "Serpico" or the "Angel of Death" can be tried in Spain for alleged torture committed over twenty-five years ago in Argentina. "The National Audience ruled that it has jurisdiction to try Cavallo for the crimes he allegedly committed under the Argentine dictatorship (1976-1983) ...

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30 Dec

Today's New York Times has an interesting piece on the promotion of human/women's rights in Africa and the tension between such rights and local custom. This is an excellent illustration of the central problem with international law (at least from a political science perspective). As I have discussed in several other posts here, the critical tension is between sovereign equality...

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30 Dec

The ACLU announced yesterday that it has filed a petition against the United States at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on behalf of Jessica Gonzales, a Colorado woman and victim of domestic violence. She lost her claim in US federal courts, which she argued all the way to the US Supreme Court, that the failure of local police to...

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29 Dec

I've been grading exams this week and reading various student explanations of how a decision on an international legal issue (defining torture) will vary depending on whether the decision-maker has a positivist or naturalist approach to international law. Of course, I could have asked my students to consider other "schools" of international legal theory -- e.g., the New Haven School,...

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