In its relentless quest to recover the underseas treasure recently found by a Florida-based company, the Spanish government has instructed its Navy, pursuant to a court order, to detain to U.S. ships belonging to that company. Those ships are currently in Gibraltar, but apparently, they will be boarded and seized as soon as they leave Gibraltar and enter...
Over at International Law Reporter, Professor Jacob Cogan points out that the Neutrality Act has been invoked a bit more frequently than I suggested in my earlier post on the subject. For a discussion of other cases invoking the Act, check out his post as well as his very useful blog. ...
Uganda's President recently suggested that rebel Lord's Resistance Army leaders should opt for alternative Ugandan justice as a way of avoiding their arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court. Peace talks to end the ongoing civil war in northern Uganda have been affected by the ICC warrants for the four LRA leaders. According to Reuters, one alternative ritual would...
I intend to follow the Charles Taylor trial on Opinio Juris in the coming months. True international trial junkies, though, will want to add an invaluable new blog to their RSS readers: The Trial of Charles Taylor: International Criminal Justice in the Making. Sponsored by the Open Society Institute, the blog contains daily coverage of the trial, expert...
Check out Bobby Chesney's take over at National Security Advisors. Bottom line: "Given that Khadr was determined by a CSRT to satisfy the “enemy combatant” definition, and given that comparable language is used in § 948a(1) to describe who counts as an unlawful enemy combatant, it would seem that there is a strong case to be made that...
Here's something you don't see very often. U.S. federal prosecutors in Sacramento have charged 7 individuals with conspiring to overthrow the Laos government. Not just weapons violations, etc, but, with violating 18 U.S.C. 960, the Neutrality Act. According to the complaint, the defendants are being charged with "providing and preparing a means for furnishing the money of and taking part in...
The G-8 Summit is scheduled to get underway on Wednesday, and with the summit will come protesters — as many as 100,000, according to estimates. Those intending to protest have already been tarred by the violent clashes between anarchists and the police last week at a pre-summit protest in Rostock; police in Heiligendamm are gearing up for similar protests...
One of great perqs of teaching international law is the opportunity to participate in study abroad programs. I have done so almost every year since I started teaching, and this year I will be headed to Sweden to teach International Trade at Suffolk Law School's program in Lund. There is virtually no limit to the choices you have if you...
That's at the center of this interesting piece from Adam Liptak in today's NY Times, on an Alien Tort Statute claim alleging the enslavement of child jockeys in the camel-racing business. The case was brought by the class-action firm Motley Rice against two camel owners who also happen to be high-ranking officials of the United Arab Emirates. (Isn't...
Charles Taylor's trial before the Special Court for Sierra Leone is set to begin on Monday. The trial, which is expected to last between 12 and 18 months, may not be the trial of the century, but it is certainly a landmark: Taylor is the first president of an African country to be tried for serious international crimes by...
Speaking of "unpeaceful" nations, the U.S. Navy has apparently bombarded a remote, mountainous village in Somalia where Islamic militants had set up a base. As an international legal matter, I believe the U.S. intervention is unproblematic because it was made in cooperation with Somali authorities (this assumes that the "Somali authorities" in question are actually in charge). But maybe I'm wrong...
The Economist Intelligence Unit has released its new "Global Peace Index," which ranks 120 nations according to their relative peacefulness. The organization based the rankings on 24 peacefulness indicators, divided into three categories: (1) measures of ongoing domestic and international conflict, such as the number of external and internal conflicts fought between 2000 and 2005, the estimated number of...
