I want to offer two thoughts on Glennon's article, which -- though I am generally skeptical of the ICC's attempts to define the crime -- I find anything but convincing. The first has to do with his central thesis: that the Special Working Group on the Crime of Aggression's proposed definition of aggression "would constitute a crime in blank prose...
The Trial Chamber has granted certification to appeal its decision upholding the Registry's selection of Richard Harvey as stand-by counsel. Here are the relevant paragraphs: 10. With regard to the first limb that must be met before certification to appeal can be granted under Rule 73(B) of the Rules, the Chamber notes that the Decision Denying Motion to Vacate concerned the...
Last year, as I was reading an early draft of the agenda for the ICC's Review Conference in 2010, I asked myself what I would change about the Rome Statute if I was King of the Assembly of States Parties. My answer was that I would amend Article 17, the complementarity provision, to make a case admissible if a national...
The Trial Chamber has -- completely unsurprisingly -- rejected Dr. Karadzic's motion challenging Richard Harvey's appointment as stand-by counsel. As I explained in a previous post, that challenge was based on three grounds: (1) Harvey's appointment violates Article 21(4) of the ICTY Statute, which provides that a defendant has the right “to communicate with counsel of his own choosing” and...
Sixty-six years ago today, President Franklin Roosevelt addressed a national radio audience to discuss his recent meeting with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin at the Tehran Conference. Stalin secured commitments to open up a second front against Germany. Roosevelt secured a commitment from Stalin to support an international security organization. 1943 was the turning point in the...
[caption id="attachment_10843" align="alignnone" width="300" caption=""][/caption](Cross posted on Smith School of Enterprise and Environment) Copenhagen, December 19 – The Copenhagen conference limped to a finish mid-day Saturday after “working” throughout the night. These all night sessions on the closing day are becoming a COP ritual, with people spending most of their time waiting around the conference room while small huddles...
I want to interrupt our Copenhagen focus to briefly flag a conversation that's on-going over at EJIL: Talk! My Temple Law colleague, Jeff Dunoff, along with Joel Trachtman (The Fletcher School) recently put out a new work--Ruling the World? Constitutionalism, International Law and Global Governance (Cambridge, 2009), which is the focus of EJIL's latest on-line symposium. Here's a description of the book project in brief: Ruling...
The one thing that has become abundantly clear this week at Copenhagen is that there is very distinct lack of trust between developed and developing countries. This came to a head on Monday with the walkout of some of the G77 countries as they believed that developed countries were attempting to scrap the Kyoto Protocol. A critical element in building trust...
[Professor Dan Bodansky is continuing his dispatches from the climate change talks. This post is cross-posted at the Smith School of Enterprise and Environment at Oxford.] Copenhagen, December 17 – With the hours counting down to the end of the Copenhagen conference, real substantive negotiations have yet to begin. Instead, the focus has been almost exclusively on procedure. All...
Monday, December 14 – The climate negotiations ground to a halt for much of today, as negotiators debated the organization of work for the second and final week of the meeting. The ostensible cause of the breakdown was concern among (some?) developing countries that the Kyoto Protocol (KP) track in the negotiations is moving more slowly, and getting less...
Here in Copenhagen, agreeing on some principles of climate finance, at least in very basic form, is at last becoming a priority. Last week, after announcing EU money for a climate change fast start fund, German Chancellor Angela Merkel acknowledged that developing countries would only enter into a climate agreement if sufficient money was committed by developed countries: “This is...
