Fresh from the first two decisions by the Special Court, Sierra Leone faces a critical political test today — its first elections since UN peacekeepers left the country 20 months ago:Long lines were visible at most polling stations in the capital, where voters queued up with umbrellas under drizzling rain, in some cases hours before voting booths opened. Vice President Solomon...
The Softwood Lumber Agreement (SLA) signed between Canada and the United States in October 2006 is headed to arbitration. As reported in a USTR press release, U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab said that “It is truly regrettable that, just ten months after the Agreement entered into force, the United States has no choice but to initiate arbitration proceedings to...
The American Journal of International Law has posted a continuation of its "Agora" on the legal validity of the Military Commissions Act of 2006. It continues an earlier Agora which was interesting and intelligent, but predictably one-sided in its relentless criticism of the MCA (thanks to the Chron of Higher Education blog for the pointer). In its continuation, the...
A federal district court has rendered an interesting memorandum opinion on whether plaintiffs in the Kenyan embassy bombing case are entitled to a jury in the determination of damages. The case also raises important questions on the applicable law in the calculation of ATS damages. Here is an excerpt from Mwani v. Bin Laden: The 523 Plaintiffs include Kenyan...
Peggy and I have noted the seeming thaw of late between the Bush administration and the ICC, citing as Exhibit 1 the US decision not to veto the Security Council resolution referring the situation in Darfur to the Court. We might have spoken too soon — according to documents obtained via FOIA by Mark Leon Goldberg, who writes about...
Joseph Raz of Oxford University has published on SSRN a short essay entitled "Human Rights Without Foundations" that is getting a lot of play, with over 150 downloads in less than a month. He offers a theory of human rights that rejects the notion that human rights must encompass universal norms and instead argues for a political approach to...
In a column that only a NYT columnist could write, Nicholas Kristof gives President Bush a 10-point plan to solve the Darfur Crisis. After noting that Condi Rice talked President Bush out of his initial instinct to send in the Marines, Kristof offers mostly sensible advice, starting with U.S. pressure to come up with a negotiated peace settlement in...
A federal district court in Washington D.C. has rendered an important decision imposing limits on the scope of terrorism claims. In Oveissi v. Iran, the court addressed an action "aris[ing] from the death of Gholam Ali Oveissi, chief of the Iranian armed forces under the Shah's pre-revolutionary government, who was gunned down on a Paris street in February 1984....
Here is an interesting profile in the Los Angeles Times of Ahmad Harun, one of the top two Sudan government officials indicted by the ICC for committing war crimes in Darfur. In a possibly sick twist, Harun is currently serving as Sudan's minister for humanitarian affairs. In any event, he seems free for now. I wonder if...
I expect very little from the media in terms of legal accuracy, particularly concerning the ICC. But this article — reproduced in one form or another in dozens of newspapers — is still a doozy:The International Criminal Court may try former Namibian president Sam Nujoma and three others in connection with the disappearance of hundreds of people. A local newspaper...
"What's Canada for?" This may seem like an odd question, but one to which Michael Byers, a lawprof at the University of British Columbia and director of the Liu Center for Global Policy there, has a clear answer. Canada should exist in order to pursue a progressive, international-law abiding foreign policy. So says his new book entitled:...
"Justice delayed," William Gladstone once said," is justice denied." True enough, but there is a competing adage: "better late than never." The latter clearly applies to the tragic story of an Australian aborigine who was awarded more than $400,000 last week for being stolen from his family as a child:"The best thing is knowing they never forgot me,...
