Just when you thought the global financial crisis was subsiding, with returns to growth in most leading economies, including the US, Europe, China, etc., we have a counter-indicator. The Financial Times reports today that McDonald's is closing its three outlets in Iceland, citing the difficult economic environment: Iceland edged further towards the margins of the global economy on Monday whenMcDonald’s announced...
As has been widely reported, Dr. Karadzic intends to boycott the start of his trial to protest the Tribunal's refusal to give him the time he needs to adequately prepare for trial. I don't know when the letter he submitted to the Tribunal will appear on the ICTY website, so I have made it available here: karadzic-submission-of-21-oct-20091 Dr. Karadzic's decision is deeply...
Martin Holterman and Marko Milanovic have been kind enough to respond to my post on the ICTY's attack on Dr. Karadzic's right of self-representation, so it's only fair that I respond to their responses. To begin with, Martin writes that "[g]iven the precedent of the Milosevic case, and undoubtedly many others with which I am less familiar, I think we can...
While I agree with Julian that the interplay of law and politics on questions of statehood can lead to difficult questions, I think his declaration that “we still don’t know when a state is a state,” does more to obscure the issues than actually give a clear picture as to how law and politics affect each other. First of all,...
Well, I don't know that for sure yet -- I only just got in from the airport an hour ago. But it sure is beautiful this time of year. I am here for what looks to be a great conference -- the first academic forum (i.e., workshop) jointly organized by the American Society of International Law and the European Society...
Seemingly more interested in placating victims groups than the judges who will determine Dr. Karadzic's guilt or innocence, prosecutors have refused to trim their monstrous and completely unworkable indictment: In written submissions released by the tribunal Tuesday, prosecutors say further cutting down their 11-count indictment against Karadzic to squeeze it into a year would prevent them presenting evidence encompassing all his...
As part of the backlash against the Goldstone Commission's recommendation that the Security Council refer the situation in Gaza to the ICC if Israel and Hamas do not conduct credible investigations of their crimes, the far-right Jerusalem Post published an editorial today entitled "Strange Justice: The ICC, Europe, and the World." The editorial was ostensibly written by a Researcher at...
The Trial Chamber in Karadzic has instructed the prosecution to reduce the scope of its indictment from monstrous and completely unworkable to somewhat less monstrous and somewhat less completely unworkable. The result? Victims groups burning judges and prosecutors (and my client) in effigy and threatening not to cooperate with the prosecution: Several hundred members of victims' associations have protested in front...
Adjudicating Europe, a new blog dedicated to EU law, has just launched. Here's how the editors describe it: EU Law, despite its expansion and maturity, has not yet developed a comparable blogsphere of its own. Languages, the vastness of its scope, or a tendency to work and discuss inside national communities, have probably influenced this lack of blogging culture among EU...
Orin Kerr has an interesting post at Volokh noting a story reporting that NSA intercepts were used in the just announced conviction in the UK of terrorists in the liquid-mixing-chemicals case. Orin is right in saying the story deserves more notice than it will probably get. I found it particularly interesting that apparently a reason why the NSA finally signed...
The Ninth Circuit last week argued that it did not have personal jurisdiction over DaimlerChrysler Corporation AG because it did not have continuous and systematic contacts with the forum. The case of Bauman v. DaimlerChrysler AG arose out of the alleged kidnapping, detention and torture of Argentinian citizens in Argentina by Argentinian state security forces acting at the direction...
David Bernstein and I agree about one thing: Pat Buchanan is a very stupid man. But if Hitler was out to conquer the world — Britain, Africa, the Middle East, the United States, Canada, South America, India, Asia, Australia — why did he spend three years building that hugely expensive Siegfried Line to protect Germany from France? Why did he start...
