The ICTR and Rwanda are quarreling again — this time over the ICTR's willingness to drop genocide charges in order to convince defendants to plead guilty. Last week the ICTR entered into such a plea bargain with Paul Bisengimana, who admitted to murder and extermination as crimes against humanity in connection with the massacre of nearly 1,000...
Kudos to the organizers and panelists on a great conference at Harvard Law School on blogging and legal scholarship. There are plenty of wonderful summaries of the conference at Legal Theory Blog, Ann Althouse, Discourse and Conglomerate. Best of all are the conferences papers, which I recommend you read if you are at all interested in...
Today, the State Department released its second, annual Country Report on Terrorism. The 292 page report contains an extensive overview of terrorists and their activities from the U.S. government’s point of view. The report’s raw numbers are striking -- 11,000 incidents of terrorism in 2005, resulting in the deaths of 14,500 people, leaving 25,000 others wounded and 35,000...
On Wednesday the city of London faced one of the most bizarre terrorist threats in its history: terrorist nail bombs as works of art. As reported here, a 36-year-old woman thought it would be an act of artistic expression to distribute various parcels throughout the city that had the look and feel of a terrorist package, such as the one...
After some last-minute lobbying of his own provinces by new Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the U.S. and Canada have announced an agreement settling their multi-decade lumber trade dispute. A copy of at least one version of the agreement can be found here. (Continue Reading) I can't speak to the actual substance of the agreement (who cares?). From a legal perspective,...
This seems to be cryptography’s breakout year. First we hAd all that FISA fun, then the breathleSs anticipation of the movIe release of the Da Vinci Code, and now the Smithy Code! Yes, Friends, it seems that Judge Smith, the witty High Court judge presiding over the recent U.K. copyright infringement trial against Da Vinci Code author Dan brown, has...
The Third Circuit this week rendered an interesting and unusual case on The Hague Convention on The Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. In Karkkainen v. Kovalchuk, the Third Circuit was faced with a precocious and intelligent eleven-year-old who had lived with her mother and stepfather in Finland. But Maria Kovalchuk increasingly grew to love the United States when...
Sometimes, it is just too easy to take potshots at the U.N. Here is another example, courtesy of Fox News: Auditors from the U.N.’s investigative arm, the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), are currently putting the last touches on an investigative report that has taken months to complete, and that aims to determine exactly what happened — and why —...
The ICJ has a new case. Today the Commonwealth of Dominica brought a case against Switzerland to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), principal judicial organ of the United Nations, concerning alleged violations by Switzerland of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations as well as of other international instruments and rules, with respect to a diplomatic envoy of Dominica to the...
The never-ending U.S.-Canada trade fight over lumber subsidies may actually be ending, according to this Maclean's report. The framework includes a cap on Canada's share of the U.S. lumber market, a border tax and the return of 78 per cent of the $5 billion in punitive duties collected by U.S. Customs since May 2002. Officials from the major producing provinces...
The company that makes and sells this t-shirt — to which I refuse to link out of principle — sponsors such high-profile conservative blogs as Instapundit, Powerline, Hugh Hewitt, Captain's Quarters, and Michelle Malkin. No additional commentary necessary. Sad tip-of-the-hat: Digby. ...
The UN Security Council passed Resolution 1672 yesterday, imposing sanctions yesterday on four Sudanese considered responsible for the the atrocities in Darfur. The Resolution passed 12-0, with China, Russia and Qatar abstaining on the ground that sanctions would disrupt the reconciliation process. The sanctioned individuals are Major General Gaffar Mohamed Elhassan, commander of the Western Military Region for the Sudanese...
