One of the remarkable differences between the Obama Administration and the Bush Administration in terms of international litigation is the utter silence of this State Department in filing amicus briefs and/or statements of interest. I know that Harold Koh has only been Legal Adviser since June and Sarah Cleveland has only been Counselor on International Law since September, but...
This story from the New York Times about the corruption of Teodoro Obiang certainly hits close to home. His $35 million dollar estate in Malibu is just down the hill from Pepperdine. Several times a year, Teodoro Nguema Obiang arrives at the doorstep of the United States from his home in Equatorial Guinea, on his way to his...
The Fifth Circuit earlier this month issued a highly unusual decision addressing whether state law could "reverse preempt" the New York Convention. As any student of international arbitration knows, state law occasionally attempts to limit the enforceability of arbitration agreements. Such a policy is preempted by the New York Convention as implemented by the Federal Arbitration Act. ...
The following is a guest post by Lt. Col. Chris Jenks, the Chief of the International Law Branch in the Office of the Judge Advocate General. Lt. Col. Jenks is posting in his personal capacity. A Canadian Court recently sentenced Désiré Munyaneza, a former Rwandan Army officer, to life imprisonment with eligibility for parole following his conviction in May for...
Another day, another attempt by the Registry to undermine the fairness of Dr. Karadzic's trial. Rule 3.3 of the Registry's Remuneration Scheme for Persons Assisting Indigent Self-Represented Accused provides that a self-representing defendant's legal team is entitled to be paid for "a maximum of 150 out-of-court preparation hours...
As I reported here, the two cases of Sullivan v. Florida and Graham v. Florida present the best opportunity for constitutional comparativism since Roper v. Simmons. We apparently are an international outlier and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, with 190 parties, categorically prohibits JLWOP for everyone under the age of eighteen. But from reading the transcripts...
Both Martin Holterman and Sasha Greenawalt have questioned my repeated -- and quite deliberate -- insistence that "no competent barrister will accept appointment as stand-by counsel under these circumstances," and that any barrister who does accept the appointment will thus "be interested in one thing and one thing only: the free publicity that comes with it." Martin's comment is the...
Compare the following. First, Reed Stevenson for Reuters: Yugoslavia tribunal judges ordered legal counsel for former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and adjourned his trial until March 2010 to give the new defence lawyers time to prepare. Karadzic has been acting as his own attorney and has been boycotting the trial which charges him with some of Europe's worst atrocities since World...
[Professor James Gathii, provides this timely insta-background on today's decision by the the ICC prosecutor to open an investigation into the 2007 post-election violence in Kenya. Professor Gaathi teaches at Albany Law School, where he is the Associate Dean for Research and Scholarship and Governor George E. Pataki Professor of International Commercial Law. He publishes extensively on legal developments in...
As most readers probably know by now, the Trial Chamber has decided to adjourn Dr. Karadzic's trial until 1 March 2010 and appoint stand-by counsel who will step in if, at that time, Dr. Karadzic continues to boycott the trial. Here are the relevant paragraphs from the decision: 19. On the issue of continuing the trial in the absence of the...
My favorite line of today's hearing in the Karadzic trial, courtesy of one of the prosecutors: "If necessary, force can be used to secure his presence in the courtroom," Uertz-Retzlaff said. Because nothing says "fair trial" quite like a defendant in restraints....
Niamh Hayes, a PhD candidate the Irish Centre for Human Rights and an intern on the Karadzic case, has a very useful guest post at the International Law Bureau about how the Trial Chamber might respond to Dr. Karadzic's boycott. The entire post is well worth a read, but I was particularly struck by Niamh's suggestion that Dr. Karadzic's actions...
