The blogosphere is all atwitter with news that the CIA has been using Viagra to bribe Afghan chieftains into revealing information about the Taliban. I was going to point out that, however successful the erections-for-info exchange might be, it is worth wondering to what extent the practice facilitates rape, marital and otherwise. But it appears Cara at Feministe has beaten...
Medecins Sans Frontieres has published their list and report of the top-ten humanitarian disasters of 2008. Africa suffers its disproportionate share: Massive forced civilian displacements, violence, and unmet medical needs in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Iraq, Sudan, and Pakistan, along with neglected medical emergencies in Myanmar and Zimbabwe, are some of the worst humanitarian and medical emergencies in the world,...
Scott Horton has a typically excellent post today at Harpers.org discussing the perversity of right-wing commentators who defend the use of torture. But I was troubled by the following comment about the ICC, which he offers in agreement with an old editorial by David Rivkin and Lee Casey: Rivkin’s history is much like that of Reynolds and Goldberg. Back when the...
A lawyer and human-rights activist with whom I spent some time while I was in Sarajevo, Adnan Kadribasic, has given me permission to turn his comment to my Karadzic post into a post of its own. I think it's remarkable, and I want everyone to see it. Here it is, edited only for typos: Dear Kevin, I support all of your...
The BBC is reporting that President-elect Obama has pledged to close Guantanamo within the next two years. The report is based on this Time Magazine article declaring him (big surprise!) their "Person of the Year." I am not 100% sure Obama has really made this pledge, but it certainly can be read that way. In response to the question as...
The Ninth Circuit yesterday rendered its long-awaited decision in Sarei v. Rio Tinto. The case was argued before the Ninth Circuit en banc in October 2007, with the fourteen month deliberations suggesting that the court struggled mightily with its decision. The decision was fractured, but the essential holding by six of the eleven judges was that exhaustion of...
This past Friday I was privileged to host an intimate colloquium at Pepperdine’s Malibu Beach House that brought together a wonderful mix of torts scholars, international law scholars, and practitioners to address the nexus between torts and the Alien Tort Statute. It was an eclectic group, including renown torts experts such as Third Restatement Reporter Michael Green, Anthony Sebok,...
Richard Falk, an eminent professor of international law and politics at Princeton, was expelled from Israel yesterday while he acting as the UN Human Rights Council's special rapporteur for human rights in the Palestinian territories. Falk was expelled by Israel because Israel believed his investigation, and indeed the UN Human Rights Council itself, is irredeemably biased against Israel. This is probably...
My friend (and OJ alum) Marko Milanovic has a superb post today on the new EJIL: Talk! about the strengths and weaknesses of the Genocide Convention. Here is a taste: Before we ask ourselves whether the Convention does what it was supposed to do, we need to look at what it actually says. And it says very, very little. The definition...
A number of readers have e-mailed to ask why, given my interest in all things ICTY, I have not said anything about the Karadzic case. The answer is relatively simple: I have been serving for the past two months as one of Dr. Karadzic's primary legal advisers, which raises a number of complicated issues vis-a-vis blogging. On the one hand,...
Treat this as the latest round in the Guantanamo discussion ...
The ACLU has filed a habeas corpus petition on behalf of a U.S. citizen who, as of the time of filing, had been held by the United Arab Emirates for about three months without charges. And, beyond the issue of unlawful detention, there are now also allegations that the UAE Security Services have used torture to extract a false confession. Did the UAE...
