For critics of universal jurisdiction, Spain's UJ statute has become the poster child for accusations of excess. How strange it seems that roughly ten years ago it was so widely celebrated as the provision that brought down General Augusto Pinochet. Spain's indicting the former Chilean dictator and Britain's detaining him on the attendant arrest warrant and extradition request...
A couple of weeks ago, Sweden did something unprecedented for an EU nation -- it indicated it would proceed with the extradition of an accused Rwandan génocidaire to Kigali. Sylvere Ahorugeze, a 53-year-old former director of Rwanda's civil aviation authority, is implicated in the 1994 murder of a group of civilians in the Kigali suburb of Gikondo. He...
British Justice Secretary Jack Straw recently proposed amending the United Kingdom's International Criminal Court Act of 2001 (which permits universal jurisdiction prosecution of atrocity crimes) to allow authorities to file cases for atrocities committed as far back as January 1, 1991. This would close a loophole that has been giving safe haven to génocidaires who enter the UK after...
I want to thank Opinio Juris for having me over the next couple of weeks as a guest-blogger. I noticed that Eugene Kontorovich's thought-provoking posts last week dealt primarily with the issue of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. My posts to start will not be that focused. If I had to discern one overarching theme for...
Last week I wrote a post about secessionism in Flanders and regionalism in Europe, more generally. That post had been inspired by a post by "Chirol"at the blog Coming Anarchy. I now see that Chirol followed-up his original Flanders piece with an essay considering a possible future of microstates in Europe. He wrote: I’ve put together a map of the future of Europe in 2020....
It takes a special kind of stupid to be Pat Buchanan. Last night, in response to a question from Rachel Maddow about whether his hostility to elevating a Latina to the Supreme Court makes sense given that 98% of Justices (108/110) have been white, Buchanan said: "White men were 100% of the people that wrote the Constitution, 100%...
The Wall Street Journal has the story: After six days of grueling debate, Iceland's parliament voted narrowly Thursday to apply to join the European Union -- an institution from which the country long stood proudly apart. But a binge of overseas expansion by Iceland's buccaneering banks led to a towering stack of bills that couldn't be paid when the credit crunch cut...
The President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, has signed the act of Parliament ratifying the Rome Statute, thus completing the Czech Republic's accession to the ICC. All of the members of the EU have now joined the Court. Congrats, Czech Republic!...
Coming Anarchy has pointed out this article from The Daily Telegraph about the increasing calls for Flanders to secede from Belgium and how this may be aided by the rise of the EU. Before getting to the main issue, I just have to note the snarky opening from the article: The notion that breaking up a country as insignificant as Belgium could lead to anything more...
For those of you who aren't F1 racing fans -- which I hope is all of you -- you might have missed the charming comments about Hitler that were recently offered by Bernie Ecclestone, the head of the league: In an interview with London's The Times newspaper, Ecclestone expressed a preference for "strong leaders," citing former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher...
It seems likely that Spain is about drastically curtail its universal jurisdiction law--the law that had been used by Magistrate Baltasar Garzon to go after Augusto Pinochet--such that it really won't be universal jurisdiction at all. While some (many?) of my international law colleagues may view this as a step backwards, I welcome this adjustment as a prudent move that will foster...
So, it looks like Britney Spears may be back on the silver screen in the near future -- in a Holocaust movie: Spears...
