In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Asia-Pacific

25 Jul

Well, that's exactly what the Obama Administration did this past Wednesday.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed the 1976 ASEAN Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC) on behalf of the United States with the intention that her signature serve as the requisite act of accession, bringing the treaty immediately into force for the United States.  Now, the treaty does not commit the United States...

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21 Jul

In 1949, a land that had for hundreds of years been home to Muslim peoples was forcibly seized by outsiders. They implemented a policy of ethnic dislocation and colonization. While some of the Muslims, chafing under the occupation, turned to terrorism,  the recalcitrant state refused to budge even until today. And the occupied country is
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02 Jul

Robert Petit, the International Co-Prosecutor, is resigning effective September 1: In a statement, Robert Petit said he would be stepping down as of 1 September for personal and family reasons. “It has been the greatest privilege of my career to have the opportunity to bring some justice to the victims of the crimes of the Khmer Rouge,” he said. “I remain convinced...

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08 Jun

I'm not a comparative constitutional-law scholar, but I find it interesting that, pursuant to Section 44(iii) of the Constitution of Australia, no one can serve in Parliament who "[i]s an undischarged bankrupt or insolvent."  The solvency requirement harkens back to the bad old days of U.S. history, when most States prohibited individuals who did not own property from voting.  But...

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22 May

Because I so rarely get to blog about uplifting things, I wanted to pass along the following story, concerning a group of aboriginals who, in 1938 -- when so much of the world was silent -- protested the Nazis' treatment of the Jews during Kristallnacht: William Cooper’s name does not appear on Yad Vashem’s list of the Righteous Among the Nations,...

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24 Mar

More than 150,000 civilians under daily bombardment, with an estimated 2800 already dead (including 500 children) and more than 7000 injured.  Water and medicine running short.  The advancing forces rejecting a cease fire.  And the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights raising concern about potential violations of international human rights and humanitarian law...

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11 Feb

Alexander Cooley of Barnard College and the Harriman Institute at Columbia University has an op-ed in the International Herald Tribune looking into how and why the U.S. is in the process of losing its air base in Kyrgyzstan. The story really gives a sense of the brass tacks of the so-called New Great Game: actually a not-so-great game of payoffs, more payoffs, threats, and...

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14 Jan

I have not been following the work of the Cambodia special chambers, which is probably why I found these views by James Bair (blogger, loyal OJ reader and soon-to-be JD from Northeastern Law School) all the more informative and interesting.  Bair is a former legal intern at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) and has followed the...

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24 Dec

Medecins Sans Frontieres has published their list and report of the top-ten humanitarian disasters of 2008.  Africa suffers its disproportionate share: Massive forced civilian displacements, violence, and unmet medical needs in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Iraq, Sudan, and Pakistan, along with neglected medical emergencies in Myanmar and Zimbabwe, are some of the worst humanitarian and medical emergencies in the world,...

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26 Nov

As a follow-up to Peggy's very interesting post below on the performance of global versus non-global law firms, let me raise an issue that has, for obvious reasons, disappeared in the last year, but which was a topic of discussion in 2007 and might well re-surface at point in the future: law firms going public via an IPO and listing...

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13 Nov

[caption id="attachment_5503" align="alignright" width="250" caption="Malé, Maldives"][/caption] This week's news out of the Maldives is the sort of story that makes international lawyers salivate. It has something for everyone, bringing together issues of democracy, transitional justice, climate change, the law of the sea, not to mention good, old-fashioned sovereignty.  On Tuesday, Mohamed Nasheed was sworn in as the archipelago's new President, ending...

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09 Nov

Something that my international business law students often have trouble grasping is that the Chinese economy remains enormously dependent upon exports to the rest of the world and to the US in particular.  On account of so much attention, often in undergraduate political science classes and elsewhere, I suspect, to the "rise of China and India," my students, and perhaps...

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