Here's a topic that you don't read about everyday: my St. John’s colleague Nelson Tebbe, who is guest blogging at Prawfsblawg, has posted about his recent work on the regulation of witchcraft in South Africa’s evolving democracy. It is an interesting mix of comparative law, democratic theory, and law and religion. (By the way, for added fun at no...
There are few more influential trade positions in the world than the U.S. Trade Representative, a cabinet-level position for the U.S. government's chief trade negotiator. One can make the case that the USTR is more important than, say, the Commerce Secretary and certainly the USTR's international portfolio makes it one of the leading international cabinet offices (behind Defense and State)....
Exciting — and long overdue — news: Germany has agreed to open its Holocaust archives in Bad Arolsen to historians and the public. The archives, which have long been used by the International Red Cross to trace missing and dead Jews, contain between 30 and 50 million documents. I hope Roger will offer us his thoughts on this...
An appeals court in the Central African Republic has referred Ange Felix Patasse, the country's former president, and Jean-Pierre Bamba, the Democratic Republic of Congo's current vice-president, to the ICC. Security forces controlled by Patasse and backed by soldiers from Bemba's then-rebel army are accused of executing and raping civilians after they staved off an attempted coup in 2002....
Or so says claimant John Paul Marshall. In the case of Marshall v. United Nations, 2006 WL 947697 (E.D. Cal. 2006) (not available online) a federal district court in Sacramento was faced with a 325 page “rambling and unintelligible” complaint that alleged that the United Nations, the United States, the State of California, and the city of Sacramento violated Marshall’s...
The ICTY has held that Vladimir "Rambo" Kovacevic, a former office in the Yugoslav army, is mentally unfit to stand trial. According to the Tribunal, "[t]he accused does not have the capacity to plead, to understand the nature of the charges, to understand the course of proceedings, to understand the details of the evidence...
The transitional government of Somalia announced yesterday that it has agreed to allow U.S. Navy vessels to enter Somali waters to pursue and capture pirates seeking refuge there. Last month, such pirates seized a South Korean fishing vessel and crew and escaped a joint U.S.-Dutch naval force by heading for Somalia. Given the rather anarchic nature of...
The Pulitzer Prizes were announced yesterday and several of the prizes recognized subjects of international concern. Here they are: Explanatory Reporting: David Finkel of the Washington Post for "his ambitious, clear-eyed case study of the United States government's attempt to bring democracy to Yemen."Beat Reporting: Dana Priest of the Washington Post for "her persistent, painstaking reports on secret...
U.N. officials are blaming (who else?) the U.S. for blocking its plan to begin renovating U.N. headquarters in NY. According to the NYT, the U.S. is blocking the disbursement of $100 million in funds to launch the project, which is expected to cost $1.6 billion. The article certainly makes it seem like the U.S. is being a bit...
The United Nations Security Council has unanimously passed Resolution 1664, which calls for Kofi Annan to begin negotiating with the Lebanese government to establish an international tribunal that would try the individuals responsible for the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and 22 others in May, 2005. Annan has suggested to the Security Council that the tribunal...
The Supreme Court denied cert. today in the case of Schneider v. Kissinger, a case involving a claim that Henry Kissinger, CIA Director Richard Helms, and the United States were liable for the Chilean coup led by Augusto Pinochet that deposed Salvador Allende. According to the D.C. Circuit opinion, the "complaint alleged that in 1970 the leader of the Chilean...
The tax man cometh. The overwhelming majority of us will dutifully pay our taxes today, perhaps with reservations, but not with actual resistance. For most I suspect income taxes are viewed as a regrettable but inevitable part of modern life. But as noted in various news reports, a small percentage will refuse to pay a portion of...
