I have to admit, when I first heard about the Mbeki Panel, I was skeptical. I assumed that the Panel's report would be a typical apologia for the Sudanese government's crimes, criticizing the ICC and defending the African Union's promise not to surrender Bashir to the Court. It looks like I owe Mbeki an apology. The recommendation section of the report...
Yes, says John Bellinger in Thursday's Washington Post: While it has done important work, the tribunal has largely outlived its utility for both sides -- and the Obama administration could face a significant international legal challenge if the tribunal orders the United States to make large monetary payments to the Iranian government. . . . When it was set up under the...
Tomorrow (Friday, October 23rd), the S.J. Quinney College of Law of the University of Utah will host a symposium entitled Freedom from Religion: Rights and National Security. You can watch the symposium online via a link on this page. Here's the brief description: Based on Professor Amos N. Guiora’s new book, Freedom from Religion: Rights and National Security (Oxford University Press, 2009),...
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. -...
