Representatives of fifty-eight nations met in Paris to sign a non-binding accord on child soldiers. The signatory states pledge to not use anyone under the age of 18 in hostilities. The statute of the International Criminal Court treats the use of soldiers 15 and under as a war crime. Given the supposedly global international law norm against capital punishment those...
The good news: The Bush Administration has finally brought criminal charges against Luis Posada Carriles — the Venezuelan terrorist and former CIA asset who blew up a Cuban commercial flight in 1976, killing 73 innocent people — narrowly avoiding a federal judge's February 1 deadline to prosecute or release him. The bad news: The Bush Administration has charged Posada with making...
The Lockerbie trials continue to raise interesting issues of international law and practice. The latest wrinkle is whether the criminal conviction of Al-Megrahi by the Lockerbie court can have preclusive effect in the United States pertaining to plaintiffs' ATA and TVPA claims. In a decision of first impression, a federal district court in Hurst v. Libya ruled that...
The Harvard International Law Journal has launched a web-based companion site called ILJ Online. The site will host original web-only content such as remarks by U.S. State Department Legal Adviser (and Opinio Juris guest-blogger) John Bellinger on the Military Commissions Act of 2006. It also provides web-only articles and commentary, such as a recent useful discussion of topics...
The D.C. Circuit has resolved numerous terrorism cases under the Flatow amendment to the FSIA. But last month's decision in Perles v. Kagy offers a new twist to the cottage industry of terrorism cases. It involves a fight for the spoils of the terrorism litigation between the plaintiff attorneys. Steven Perles is the attorney who brought the successful claims against...
U.S. Congressman Adam Schiff of California introduced a resolution last week called the "Affirmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution." It calls upon President Bush to "to ensure that the foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide documented in the United...
I would like to start out this stint as a guest-blogger (or perhaps academics should say "visiting-blogger") by thanking the regular Opinio Juris crew for having me, and for maintaining a consistently excellent blog that has become an indispensable professional resource for me. The blog has also attracted an audience of extremely well-informed readers, and I look forward to learning...
The United Nations' special envoy for Kosvo proposed last week that Serbia should be partitioned between Serbs and Albanians. The country’s Kosovo region, currently occupied by NATO troops and administered by the U.N. ("UNMIK"), would be severed from Serbia to form a second Albanian state. Serbia naturally opposes this outside interference with what all agree to be its sovereign borders....
Excellent news: Morocco is set to become the first Arab country to formally abolish the death penalty:Morocco will become by the end of April the first Arab state to remove the death penalty from its statute books, the president of the state appointed Consultative Committee on Human Rights, Ben Dhikri, confirmed to Adnkronos International (AKI) on Thursday. He is among...
Amazing images from Radical Cartography. Click to enlarge. Europe has an area of 4.0 million square miles, compared to 9.4 million square miles for North America (3.5 million of which is the United States). ...
Opinio Juris is pleased to welcome Professor Eugene Kontorovich as as guest blogger for the next week or so. Professor Kontorovich is on the faculty of the George Mason Law School, and is currently a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School. He specializes in public international law, constitutional law, and law and economics. His...
President Chirac of France announced yesterday that France and 46 nations will begin deliberations to replace the United Nations Environmental Programme with a more powerful world environmental body. Coming on the heels of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's recent report on climate change, Chirac called for "the transformation of the UNEP into a genuine international organisation to which...
