I've only met Professor Christopher Greenwood of the Department of Law of the London School of Economics once, but I have long been an admirer of his work. He is a prolific and interesting scholar, as well as a leading practitioner of public international law. Greenwood's credentials for the ICJ are impeccable (check them out here). But he is facing flak at...
I have posted a substantially rewritten version of my essay "Situational Gravity Under the Rome Statute" on SSRN. Here, again, is the abstract: The ICC is often derided as the "African Criminal Court." That criticism cannot easily be dismissed: all of the Office of the Prosecutor's (OTP) current investigations focus on African states -- Uganda, the Central African Republic, the Democratic...
The Czech Republic is set to become the 109th member of the ICC. The lower house of the Czech parliament recently voted 140-6 in favor of ratifying the Rome Statute, which the country signed in 1999. The upper house voted to ratify the Statute in July. Kudos to the Czech Republic!...
Article XX(a) of the GATT allows countries to violate WTO rules if doing so is “necessary to protect public morals.” The “public morals” exception is notoriously elusive, with only one WTO case—the US-Gambling Services case—clarifying the scope of the exception. So in a real sense we don’t really know when “public morals” can or cannot be invoked. ...
Last week the ICJ issued an order for provisional measures (pdf is here) in the Case Concerning Application of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Georgia v. Russian Federation) . This case, along with the recent referral to the ICJ for an advisory opinion on the status of Kosovo, are the latest cases arising out of...
Today, Friday, October 24, is United Nations Day. If you are in the United States, however, your reaction is more likely to be - huh? What United Nations Day? This is not a feature of a right-wing blackout to prevent takeover by the 'black helicopters' - neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post (I checked the paper copies,...
One further side note to the discussion of Roger's article in Virginia journal on Nobel Prize winners ...
It appears that there may have been some progress regarding the Prosecutor's ability to disclose the potentially exculpatory information to the defense -- progress that is not reflected in yesterday's decision. According to a recent motion, the Prosecutor has received permission to turn over all of the disputed documents to the Trial Chamber in unredacted form, so that the judges...
The Lubanga fiasco continues. Earlier today, the Appeals Chamber upheld the Trial Chamber's indefinite stay of the proceedings, but refused to order his immediate release, instead remanding the case to the Trial Chamber for further consideration of the issue. I have not had a chance to read the two -- typically lengthy -- decisions in any great detail, but these are...
Paul Kennedy, distinguished Yale historian and author of many works, including most recently his history of the United Nations, The Parliament of Man, had a striking opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal on October 17, 2008, "Weak States and Scofflaws Have No Business on the Security Council." At issue was which countries would take up the rotating memberships on...
Hope springs eternal in the Sudan -- at least on the part of the government. Apparently, Khartoum has managed to convince itself that the Pre-Trial Chamber's recent request for additional information concerning the charges against Bashir means that it intends to dismiss those charges: The Sudanese government hailed a decision by the judges of the International Criminal Court (ICC) requesting more...
That's the situation with the Sudanese government's latest contribution to the "peace" process: The United States, Darfuri rebels and Sudanese opposition parties have greeted a new initiative to solve the Darfur crisis with scepticism and boycotts, while Khartoum, the Arab League and the UN say it’s the region’s best hope. Widespread doubts about the credibility of the process prevail ahead of deliberations...
