The Iraqi Special Tribunal, constituted to try Saddam Hussein and members of his former government, announced Sunday that the first case against Saddam had been referred for trial. The referral is akin to indictment in the US criminal justice system, and will allow the trial to be scheduled. The first case involves Saddam's massacre of over 150 Shiites in Dujyal...
Marty Lederman has posted this excellent analysis of the Hamdan case over at Balkinzation.com. As Julian pointed out in his original post, the DC Circuit's conclusion that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to the current conflict with al Qaeda is vulnerable on appeal to the Supreme Court. Lederman probes deeper into the question of whether Common Art. 3 of...
My blogging will be very light over the next two weeks as my wife and I retreat to a more or less undisclosed foreign location. We'll see whether I can stay away for long...
It looks like Justice O'Connor is not going to slow down much in retirement. As this article notes, she spent last week attending a conference of the Central and Eastern European Legal Initative (CEELI) in Istanbul. Apparently, Justice O'Connor is passionate about building and promoting independent judiciaries in the former Eastern Bloc and Soviet Union. Interestingly, she herself...
As I predicted back in April, a panel of the D.C. Circuit unanimously rejected constitutional and treaty-based challenges to a trial of alleged terrorists by military commission. The decision reversed a lower court's finding that the whole military commission system is a violation of the Geneva Convention. The D.C. Circuit's key holdings:The Sept 11 Resolution for the Authorization of the...
This week Japan granted undersea gas drilling rights to an area also claimed by China. This is a separate dispute from Japan's attempt to convert a rock into a Tokyo address. But it is another serious irritant in what is an increasingly contentious and dangerous relationship.Why can't Japan and China agree to submit their dispute to the ICJ like Benin...
The papers this week have been filled with discussions of the ten-year anniversary of the Serb massacre at Srebrenica. Two articles well worth reading are Christopher Hitchen's post at Slate, and this one in the Economist (sub. req'd). I also read with great interest the comments to Julian's post on the broader question of deterrence and international criminal law. While...
While some (mostly right-wing) groups continue to worry about the transfer of "sovereignty " to the UN in treaties like that for the Law of the Sea Treaty, there is a far more important international struggle afoot: control of the internet.As CNET reports, a recent meeting of the U.N.'s Working Group on Internet Governance turned into a gripe-session where various...
I just wanted to thank those readers who have added very thoughtful comments to my post on deterrence and international criminal justice here. For those of you who haven't seen the comments, I hope you find time to take a look and maybe drop a few comments yourself....
A Chamber of the ICJ issued a decision today (only the summary is available so far) in the long-running border dispute between Niger and Benin. The Court awarded Niger 16 out of 25 disputed islands, including the largest island, lying in the Niger River on the border between the two countries. The two countries have been squabbling over...
Sometimes, international law wanders far afield from questions of international criminal justice and basic human rights. Sometimes, it is just about collecting some money. Case in point: the City of New York has apparently won a judgment in federal court clearing the way for it to collect a total of $25 million in back taxes from the governments...
UVA lawprof Rosa Brooks has a measured op-ed in Sunday's LA Times surveying the progress of efforts to prosecute serious violations of international human rights on the 10th anniversary of the massacre at Srebenica. Unlike some advocates of international criminal justice, Prof. Brooks is restrained in her claims for the benefits of international tribunals like the International Criminal Court. Even...
