My vote for the most important international law case of the month is Shell v. Ijaw Aborigines of Bayelsa State. The Federal High Court in Port Harcourt, Nigeria rendered its $1.5 billion dollar judgment against Shell on February 24, 2006. I have searched in vain for the text of the decision and will update the post once it becomes available....
This Friday, March 3, 2006, St. John’s Law School will host a conference entitled Federalism Past, Federalism Future: A Constitutional Law Symposium. The full brochure is available here and the symposium papers will be published this spring in a 20th anniversary issue of the St. John’s Journal of Legal Commentary.The Conference will have well-known Constitutional Law luminaries, such as Akhil...
Professor Curtis Bradley has put together a terrific conference at Duke Law School this week on Delegating Sovereignty. The presenters are leading law school and political science scholars. This is a topic that pops up in many contexts, including my own personal obsession with the ICJ (see my articles on the subject here and here) but also in many other...
The U.S. and Colombian governments have announced they have reached a bilateral free trade agreement. The USTR's announcement can be found here and a pdf summary of the agreement can be found here.As the NYT points out, a U.S-Colombia Free Trade Agreement will be the largest U.S. free trade agreement in the Western Hemisphere south of Mexico. Moreover, with...
Today, the ICJ opened public hearings in the long-anticipated case between Bosnia and Serbia over Serbia's alleged responsibility for genocide during the 1993-1999 Balkan wars. The ICJ has decided to make everything public and web-accessible. Hence, the opening argument of Bosnia's counsel is already available here. This case has a long and torturous procedural history. It was...
A report prepared for Mexico's President, Vicente Fox, has concluded that the Mexican government and military committed numerous crimes against humanity during its "scorched earth" campaign against alleged left-wing rebels between 1964 and 1982: The draft report's authors write: "The authoritarian attitude with which the Mexican state wished to control social dissent created a spiral of violence which...
The Supreme Court in the case of Ministry of Iran v. Elahi, rendered a rather insignificant decision last week regarding the FSIA and state instrumentalities. At issue was whether claimants could attach Iranian assets in the United States to satisfy various successful terrorism judgments. Problem was, the asset was an arbitral award in favor of the Iranian Ministry of Defense....
The New York Times has a very unusual human interest piece about a former Taliban ambassador who is now a student at Yale. It is an extraordinarily long piece that strives mightily to put Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi in the best positive light as a reformed member of the Taliban. It includes an interesting discussion of a 2001 debate Rahmatullah had...
Great interview with Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League over at the Jerusalem Post. He discusses the Mohammad cartoons, Jewish-Christian relations, anti-Semitism, the movie Munich, and the threat of Iran. Here are a few highlights:On Cartoons: "Humor definitely can play a useful role in exposing hypocrisy in controversial issues, particularly in getting young people to pay attention. The question is...
On the lighter side of international law, a 52-year-old South African grandmother was arrested and charged with drug smuggling in New Zealand after Nigerians stuffed her suitcases with ceramic gnomes filled with cocaine. As reported here:Crown prosecutor Bruce Northwood said the Crown did not deny it was a sad story but the woman must have known what she had got...
The journal Foreign Policy has an interesting post on the cost of international criminal tribunals. I have to admit I had no idea they were so expensive. According to the article, "As of November 2005, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) had handed down judgments for only 25 individuals. More than $1 billion has been spent on the tribunal...
