From the Judgment: It was further argued that Germany alone could decide, in accordance with the reservations made by many of the Signatory Powers at the time of the conclusion of the Briand-Kellogg Pact, whether preventive action was a necessity, and that in making her decision final judgment was conclusive. But whether action taken under the claim of seIf-defense was in...
My UN Dispatch friend Mark Leon Goldberg notes today that a group of Representatives are circulating a "Dear Colleague" letter urging their colleagues to support a resolution "opposing the United States joining the Rome Statute or participating in the upcoming review conference." Reading the letter is an infuriating experience, not only for its ridiculously bad grammar -- how does one...
Julian beat me to the punch regarding the new Council on Foreign Relations report, From Rome to Kampala: The U.S. Approach to the 2010 International Criminal Court Review Conference. Not surprisingly, I don't share Julian's enthusiasm for it. On the contrary, I think it's extremely disappointing, little more than a reiteration of the same tired talking points that the...
Although the U.S. is already prosecuting a pirate captured last year in New York, I hadn't realized the U.S. was going to be trying other pirates in federal court as well. But since Kenya has stopped accepting pirates for prosecution in their courts, I guess it makes sense that the U.S. and other countries will have to step up to...
Eli Lake has a fantastic essay at Reason.com on the myriad ways in which Obama has replicated the worst excesses of the Bush administration with regard to national security. He rightly identifies the source of the problem -- the AUMF, which was passed in a fit of hysteria three days after 9/11 and has no natural expiration date. Here is...
Eric Posner has an editorial today in the Wall Street Journal today that uses the recent indictment of Judge Garzon in Spain as an opportunity to dust off the traditional far-right attack on the concept of universal jurisdiction and the existence of the ICC. It's a remarkably misleading editorial, one that deserves a thorough response. Mr. Garzon wanted to prosecute Pinochet...
I rarely get to blog about the relationship between my two favorite things -- professional basketball and international law -- so I would be remiss if I failed to comment on the latest problem to afflict the New Jersey Nets, one of the worst teams in the NBA. The Nets are in the process of being sold to Mikhail Prokhorov,...
Putting aside events in Kyrgyzstan (which certainly bear close watching), the day's big news for international lawyers was President Obama and Russian President Dmitri A. Medvedev signing two related international agreements on the reduction of nuclear armaments. The State Department has posted the originals of this new START treaty here (see here for the longer, more detailed Protocol to that...
The NYT reports that the Obama Administration has authorized the targeted killing of an American citizen, the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, The article notes the international law justification for his killing: he is an avowed member of Al Qaeda actively engaged in hostilities against the U.S. Under either the law of armed conflict or the general law of self-defense,...
So, it turns out that the US military was lying through its teeth when it claimed that the three Afghan women murdered during a "bungled" Special Operations attack in Afghanistan six weeks ago were not killed by NATO -- read: American -- forces: NATO military officials had already admitted killing two innocent civilians — a district prosecutor and local police...
I've long thought that any scholar who wants to maintain his or her credibility should stay far away from the US government, no matter which party is in power. Harold Koh is a case in point. Others have highlighted his problematic testimony about targeted killing, which continued to maintain the Bush administration's fictions --...
Every time that I teach international criminal law, at least one student writes on whether you could prosecute the Burmese junta for crimes against humanity. As a matter of substantive ICL, the answer is clearly yes. The problem is jurisdictional -- who is going to prosecute them? Apparently, the UK thinks it should be the ICC via a Security Council...
