In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Recent Posts

03 Apr

Following is an excerpt from the State Department press briefing from April 1st in which Richard Boucher discussed Security Council Resolution 1593 (transcribed, along with state comments, here), referring the Darfur situation to the ICC (see also the press release from the ICC itself, with links to other resources, here). Some of the questions focus on whether the Security Council...

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02 Apr

The text of the resolution, as well as a summary statements of Security Council members on the resolution, is here.The resolution passed 11-0-4. The four abstentions were Algeria, Brazil, China, and the U.S. The technique of not necesarily supporting something but not preventing it either by abstaining has been a technique that has become more common in the Post-Cold War...

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31 Mar

Suzanne Nossel at DemocracyArsenal has posted a news report stating that the US has agreed to let the ICC handle the trials of the crimes in Darfur. An ICC referral is a topic that we here at Opinio Juris have debated at length. See here, here, and here for only three examples (other links our within these previous...

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31 Mar

It looks like Opinio Juris will be temporarily moving to Washington D.C. over the next few days, more specifically the Loews L'Enfant Plaza Hotel where the annual meeting of the American Society of International Law is being held. If you see one of us there, don't be shy about pulling us aside and telling us how wonderful you think this...

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31 Mar

This week Cambodia moved closer to setting up an international tribunal to try war crimes committed by the notorious Khmer Rouge regime. The genocide of Pol Pot and his associates has been documented by numerous groups, most notably by Yale's Cambodian Genocide Program. More wrangling over funding and structure of the tribunal remains, but it will likely be a "hybrid"...

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31 Mar

The head of the U.N.'s Electoral Assistance Division is being accused of permitting or creating an "abusive" environment full of sexual innuendo and intimidation in a recent preliminary report commissioned by the U.N. Sounds like fairly standard hostile workplace environment claims, except the U.N. is not subject to U.S. sexual harassment laws. Indeed, it is unclear exactly what...

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30 Mar

Julian's earlier post about his experiences at the Vis International Arbitration Moot competition got me thinking about the rather strained ways in which international lawyers continue to cling to distinctions between private and public interactions, a reflection of an unnecessarily rigid "private v. Public" jurisprudence. (Okay, I will admit his post also got me thinking about my semester in Vienna...

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30 Mar

There is an excellent new foreign policy blog called Democracy Arsenal that is focused not only on current issues in international affairs but also on elucidating a progressive foreign policy. The bloggers have experience in government service, political campaigns, NGOs, and private enterprise. I know one of the writers, Suzanne Nossel, I think her writing is incisive and intelligent....

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29 Mar

My ubiquitous colleague Eric Freedman, who has in the past 10 days testified on the Terry Schiavo case before Congress and consulted in the Medellin case, passes along this info about yet another one of his cases. Judge Henry H. Kennedy of the D.C. federal district court has granted a preliminary injunction preventing the Defense Department from transferring...

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29 Mar

Having failed to motivate myself to get down to D.C. for oral argument in Medellin, and being too cheap to shell out the money for an instant transcript, I will have to content myself with reviewing the several very interesting press accounts of the argument at SCOTUSBlog, Slate, Law.com, and the NYT. All of these accounts seem to agree that...

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28 Mar

Professor Barry Carter of Georgetown University Law Center recently posted onto the American Society of International Law’s listserve that the 2005 National Defense Strategy, undersigned by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld states the following in the section assessing America’s vulnerabilities:“Our strength as a nation state will continue to be challenged by those who employ a strategy of the weak using international...

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