Jonathan Adler, a blogger at The Volokh Conspiracy, has asked me what I think about the editorial that Robert Bernstein, the founder of Human Rights Watch, published yesterday in the New York Times criticizing the organization's coverage of Israel. My basic response: although I disagree with much of what Bernstein has to say, his criticisms must give anyone pause, because...
Making Sense of Darfur will be holding an online symposium over the next few weeks dedicated to analyzing what is likely to happen in Sudan in 2010 and 2011. Here is how it's described by Alex de Waal, with whom I rarely agree but always respect: Sudan faces two momentous events in the next fifteen months. The first is the general...
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...
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,...
I just wanted to note that I have posted to SSRN The Language of Law and the Practice of Politics: Great Powers and the Rhetoric of Self-Determination in the Cases of Kosovo and South Ossetia, which is part of the special issue of the Chicago Journal of International Law about great power politics to which Ken has referred a couple of times....
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...
Last January, I blogged about a request by the Sudan Workers Trade Federation Union (SWTU) and the Sudan International Defence Group (SIDG) to submit a brief to the ICC opposing the warrant for Bashir's arrest. The Appeals Chamber recently granted the request, limiting the groups to commenting on the legal issue at the heart of the appeal -- whether the...
Technology marches on, and here we have a demonstration video, on YouTube and Wired's Dangerroom, showing how a flying beetle can be implanted with miniaturized neural electrodes that allow the human operator to stimulate muscles that cause it to fly to the right or left. The applications to the battlefield, counterterrorism, etc., are obvious. (Thanks to National Journal's Shane Harris...
Over at Foreign Policy magazine's blog, Eric Posner has a brief, breezy column on differences, or not, between the Bush and Obama administrations on international law. Fun, quick read, whether one agrees or not. And events of the moment - the opening of the UN General Assembly, the UN confabs on things like climate change, the G-20 meetings, etc. -...
As part of the backlash against the Goldstone Commission's recommendation that the Security Council refer the situation in Gaza to the ICC if Israel and Hamas do not conduct credible investigations of their crimes, the far-right Jerusalem Post published an editorial today entitled "Strange Justice: The ICC, Europe, and the World." The editorial was ostensibly written by a Researcher at...
According to Newsweek, the answer may well be yes: As chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo has so far steered clear of controversial cases. In doing so, he hoped to allay U.S. fears that the ICC would become a politicized tool for settling scores. Which is why it's so surprising that Moreno-Ocampo is now considering an investigation into...
I imagine there will be much gnashing of teeth over the Goldstone Commission's report -- the meme of the day seems to be that because the Commission was on a fact-finding mission, it wasn't permitted to infer from those facts that war crimes or crimes against humanity were committed -- but this attack deserves special mention: Avi Bell, a professor of...
