If someone sexually assaults a woman in Canadian territorial waters, where would you expect that person to be prosecuted? Why, in Alaska of course. Earlier this week the Alaska Supreme Court rendered an unusual decision in State v. Jack addressing the question of whether a state criminal statute against sexual assault could be applied extraterritorially to prosecute someone who committed...
While on the subject of the Holocaust, in case you missed it, the madness of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is now nearing clinical diagnosis with his latest remarks. As reported in the New York Times, Ahmadinejad had this to say today: "Today, they have created a myth in the name of Holocaust and consider it to be above God, religion and the...
The book that Michael Bazyler and I have been working on for over two years, Holocaust Restitution: Perspectives on the Litigation and Its Legacy (Bazyler & Alford, eds., 2006) is now available for purchase at Amazon here or NYU Press here. The book has received good reviews (available here) such as IAGS President Israel Charney's blurb that the book...
That's a central question for states as they gather this week in Dakar, Senegal for the 17th Meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol. Unlike its more controversial cousin, the Kyoto Protocol, the Montreal Protocol is widely regarded as the success story for using treaties to address a global problem -- i.e., the hole in the ozone layer. Although...
Dick Marty, the Council of Europe Rapporteur to the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights announced today that there is credible evidence of secret detention centers and of detainees being transported through Council member states without required judicial involvement. No detainees are currently being held by the United States in Europe, though Poland and Romania are believed to...
... this is the title of an op-ed in today's International Herald Tribune by Spencer Boyer. Spencer and I were law school classmates and I appreciate his insights.His essay returns to a topic that we have discussed here on Opinio Juris--the riots in an around Paris--but he is provocative in how he assesses prejudices on both sides of...
An English translation of the Swedish Supreme Court decision in Åke Green was sent to me today by the religious liberty organization Alliance Defense Fund. A copy of the English translation is here (UPDATE: link now fixed). The original Swedish Supreme Court decision is here. In brief, the case involved the prosecution of pastor Åke Green for hate speech for...
Lots of news today regarding the involvement of Syria in Lebanese politics and specifically the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik a-Hariri. On the same day that the UN annouced that it has new evidence of Syrian involvement in the assassination and accused Syria of obstructing the investigation, a car bomb exploded in Beirut , killing a prominent...
Two stories on choosing between publishing in a mid-level mainline journal and an international law journal: Story Number 1: I had a colleague a few years back who was going up for tenure that year and had outstanding offers to publish her article from the Harvard International Law Journal and the Rutgers Law Review. She was particularly concerned...
The Israeli Defense Forces has long used targeted assassinations to eliminate alleged terrorists, as Steven Spielberg's newest film Munich reminds us. Interestingly, the government of Israel is currently defending the legality of the practice, invoking the customary international law of war to justify its recent killing of two alleged Palestinian terrorists. The theory here is that after...
On the lighter side of international law, over the weekend a law student was crowned Miss World 2005. You would think the most beautiful law student in the world would attend the most beautiful law school, (as ranked by 100,000 students who attend elsewhere). But no, Unnur Birna Vilhjalmsdottir, 21, is a law student in Iceland of all places, and...
Secretary Rice continues her PR offensive. This time, her target audience is U.S. readers of the Washington Post's Sunday Outlook section and her topic is not torture, but a restatement of the Bush Administration's main strategic goals in foreign policy as the search for a Kantian(?) "democratic peace." None of this is new exactly, but it is interesting nonetheless. Here's...
