I apologize for arriving late to the party; I have only just had a chance to read Professor Ring's fascinating article completely through. There are many reasons why I would come to this article already predisposed to like it - I started out life as an international tax lawyer, for example, and I am also an unapologetic defender within the...
(Update, responding to Roger above: Let me stress that I have zero knowledge about Nobel Prizes apart from what I describe from my own experience below. I don't mean to generalize about them, although it sounds that way in part below. If there is any generalization that comes out of the experiences I mention below, it is about the nature...
That's the headline of today's New York Times article about Ali Kushayb, the janjaweed militia leader who has been indicted by the ICC. According to the article, the "[t]he move is widely being interpreted as a way for Sudan to improve its image abroad and attempt to head off the possible genocide prosecution of the country’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir." Honestly,...
Ladies and gentlemen, your peacemaker: Al-Bashir who rarely gives interviews told the British Channel 4 News from Khartoum that rape claims are made up by Darfuri women. “The women inside the camps are under the influence of the rebels and some are even relatives of the rebels. That’s why they make these claims” Al-Bashir said. “We are fully convinced that no rape took...
The Christian Science Monitor ran an important story on Darfur a few days ago, detailing how Bashir is using the claim that his indictment will derail the peace process as a smokescreen for continuing to wage war against the Darfurians. The title says it all -- "Sudan Makes Case Abroad While Still Bombing Darfur": "How will the ICC hamper the peace...
What is it with international prosecutors and their duty to disclose exculpatory evidence? First the ICC stays the Lubanga trial because of the Prosecutor's abuse of Article 54. And now the ICTR has had to formally reprimand its Prosecutor, Hassan Jallow, for failing to disclose exculpatory evidence in the high-profile Military II trial: In their ruling dated September 22, 2008, the...
I have spent a fair bit of time the past couple days reviewing the Supreme Court's docket for the upcoming term with an eye for any cases that might be of particular interest to our readers. Here is my list of the most important cases that are germane to our discipline. The big issues are (1) senior government...
The Daily Monitor Online, the web presence of one of Uganda's leading independent newspapers, has an interesting article today suggesting that the newly-enacted Child Soldiers Accountabilty Act could be used against senior officials in the Ugandan People's Defence Force (UPDF) -- the armed forces of Uganda -- if they traveled to the US: While no senior officer in the UPDF has...
Professor Charli Carpenter (of UMass Amherst Political Science Department) and I had a lovely conversation over the weekend about battlefield robots. Well, actually it was an interview for a project of hers, so she let me do pretty much all the talking. She has now posted some thoughts of her own, in highly interesting, highly recommended (for that small chunk...
It's about time: The American Psychological Association has notified President Bush of a significant change in the association’s policy that limits the roles of psychologists in certain unlawful detention settings where the human rights of detainees are violated. The new policy is in response to actions that have occurred at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at so-called CIA...
It's official. President Bush has signed the Child Soldiers Accountability Act: The Child Soldiers Accountability Act makes it a federal crime to recruit knowingly or to use soldiers under the age of 15 and permits the United States to prosecute any individual on US soil for the offense, even if the children were recruited or served as soldiers outside the United...
These people have no shame: Pentagon prosecutors are asking a military judge to reverse himself and reassemble the jury that convicted Osama bin Laden's driver at Guantánamo, seeking to overturn a sentence that could make the first war court convict eligible for release by New Year's Eve. At issue is a decision at the first U.S. war crimes tribunal since World War...
