In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Regions

28 Apr

No sooner had I read Peter's thought-provoking post about transparency in arbitration than I received a link to a complete webcast of this month's arbitration before the Permanent Court of Arbitration between the Government of Sudan and the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement/Army over the Abyei region.  This appears to be the first videotape/webcast of an arbitration between a state and...

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26 Apr

Despite his checkered past, I'm beginning to like Jacob Zuma, who is set to become the next President of South Africa, more and more: The Sudanese president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir will not be invited to the inauguration ceremony of the South African president-elect Jacob Zuma, according to news reports. The ruling African National Congress (ANC) headed by Zuma has an absolute majority...

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22 Apr

U.S. prosecutors charged the sole surviving Somali pirate from the Maersk Alabama incident, Abduwali Muse, yesterday on charges of piracy, conspiracy to seize a ship by force, discharging a firearm during a ship seizure, conspiracy to commit hostage-taking and brandishing a firearm during a hostage taking.  The list of reported charges seems to confirm Eugene Kontorovich's suggestion yesterday in a great post over at...

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18 Apr

In today's Washington Post, Curtis Bradley and Jack Goldsmith have an editorial attacking the recent refusal of a federal judge to grant a motion to dismiss in Khulumani v. Barclays National Bank Ltd, the ATS lawsuit brought by victims of apartheid against 23 corporations who did business with the South African government during the apartheid era.  It's a remarkably unpersuasive...

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18 Apr

More evidence that the CIA interrogators did not rely in good faith on the OLC memos: Bradbury's 30 May 2005 memo acknowledges (p. 37) that the CIA Inspector General's report found that the CIA waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times in March 2003 and Abu Zubaydah 83 times in August 2002.  That regime far surpasses the CIA's own internal guidelines...

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17 Apr

I'm not particularly surprised, but I'm still disappointed. Israel's ostensible justification is that the UNHRC resolution that created the fact-finding mission is biased, because it only asked Goldstone to investigate Israeli war crimes. That was a ridiculous move on the UNHRC's part, to be sure -- but one of the very first things Goldstone did was to make...

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15 Apr

As with the earlier comments by Ed Swaine, I greatly appreciate Michael Ramsey’s astute observations regarding how political commitments fit into the constitutional discourse. I've endeavored to provide my initial responses to each of his suggestions below, although surely Duncan and I will build from his comments as we develop our theories going forward. We are pleased that Professor Ramsey agrees...

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15 Apr

Der Spiegel reports from Germany (the article is detailed and worth reading in full): In the latest dispute over the European Union's anti-piracy mission off the coast of Somalia, lawyers representing two suspects being detained in Kenya have filed suits against the German government. They want Berlin to foot the bill for the suspects' defense and ensure they are given a...

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09 Apr

All news is local, I guess, even in this supposedly globalized age.  So it is not surprising that it took an attack on a U.S. ship with a U.S. crew to focus the American public's attention on the piracy problem off the coast of Somalia.  But as readers of this blog can attest, the piracy issue has been flagged, addressed,...

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