In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Regions

17 Oct

As everyone in the world probably knows by now, Dr. Karadzic's trial is set to begin on October 26th.  The current trial date is the culmination of two interrelated decisions by the Tribunal: the Trial Chamber's unsurprising decision not to require the Prosecution to trim its monstrous and completely unworkable indictment (choosing instead to impose insignificant time-limits on the prosecution's...

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16 Oct

The Obama Administration is becoming famous for their Friday night news dumps (deficit reports are always on Fridays).  So here is another one sure to anger some parts of their base, but which is carefully buried while everyone is watching the Yankees beat up on the Angels. The Obama administration has formulated a new policy for Sudan that proposes working with that country’s...

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14 Oct

The Washington Post reports that a prominent Democratic fundraiser and close ally of Senator John Kerry (chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee) is seeking to be permitted to lobby on behalf of the current Sudanese government.  This may seem a little weird, and even morally distasteful, but it is another logical consequence of the engagement strategy.  As the hopeful...

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10 Oct

I have no expertise in this area, so I'm not going to opine on the legality of Zelaya's ouster.  Two things, however, are worth noting.  First, the report that Julian mentions was not written by the Congressional Research Service -- a mistake that others on the right have made.  It was written by the Law Library of Congress.  Second, the...

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10 Oct

Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina weighs in today with a WSJ oped blasting the Obama Administration's policy toward Honduras. Putting aside the merits of DeMint's analysis for the time being, I found his oped interesting for two reasons: one having to do with DeMint's somewhat sketchy actions, and the other with Harold Koh's potentially sketchy legal advice. 1) "One Voice"? DeMint is...

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07 Oct

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,...

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01 Oct

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...

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29 Sep

Another classic by the Sudanese government: Ismail also accused Israel of being behind aggravation and continuation of the Darfur crisis, saying "a group of Darfurians have recently admitted that they have provided the International Criminal Court (ICC) with false evidences, which support our assurances that there are Zionist trends behind aggravation of the Darfur crisis and undermining of the stability in...

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28 Sep

When I wrote my critique of the Jerusalem Post editorial on the ICC, I also sent a short letter to the editor pointing out the editorial's basic factual errors.  It was a very straightforward letter -- no politics, just indisputably true facts such as that the ICTY and the ICC are different institutions. It's been more than a week, and the...

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27 Sep

Economic blackmail is a part of politics -- but Israel's latest ultimatum to the Palestinian Authority regarding the ICC is still unfortunate: Israel has warned the Palestinian Authority that it would condition permission for a second cellular telephone provider to operate in the West Bank - an economic issue of critical importance to the PA leadership - on the Palestinians withdrawing...

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