Harvard Law School is hosting in a couple of week what is certain to be a very interesting small conference on the Alien Tort Statute. I was lucky enough to be one of the invitees, addressing the issue of corporate liability under the ATS. I address the issue of corporate liability under the ATS, but am actually interested in it...
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...
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...
This video from Anne Bayefsky of the Human Rights Council meetings on the Goldstone Report is fascinating (though I am not on board with her over-the-top attack on Goldstone personally). But note the indiscriminate and deeply hypocritical use of the words "genocide," "war crimes," and "crimes against humanity" by the least morally attractive member states of the HRC (How...
Assuming that the other Circuits follow suit, Roger is almost certainly right that the Second Circuit's recent decision in Talisman Energy "will be the death knell for most corporate liability claims under the Alien Tort Statute." That's regrettable in itself. What's particularly regrettable, though, is that the Second Circuit still has no idea what it's talking about when it comes...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Seemingly more interested in placating victims groups than the judges who will determine Dr. Karadzic's guilt or innocence, prosecutors have refused to trim their monstrous and completely unworkable indictment: In written submissions released by the tribunal Tuesday, prosecutors say further cutting down their 11-count indictment against Karadzic to squeeze it into a year would prevent them presenting evidence encompassing all his...
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...
