In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Organizations

16 Jan

Tomorrow, as part of its Leading Figures in International Dispute Resolution Series, the ASIL’s International Courts and Tribunals Interest Group (ICTIG) will host a talk by Meg Kinnear, Secretary General of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) to discuss the ICSID system for settling investor-state disputes. The event details are as follows: ASIL Headquarters, Tillar House 2223 Massachusetts Avenue, NW Washington DC 20008 January 17, 2012 6:00...

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12 Jan

I want to call readers' attention to a very useful new essay written by Emory's Laurie Blank, which is forthcoming in the William Mitchell Law Review.  Here is the abstract: Targeted strikes – predominantly using drones – have become the operational counterterrorism tool of choice for the United States over the past few years. Targeted killing can...

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09 Jan

The choice of book reviewer might be surprising but the result, unfortunately, is not.  Yoo reviews two books: David Scheffer's memoir All the Missing Souls  and William Shawcross' Justice and the Enemy. Scheffer's book details his time working on war crimes issues, ultimately as the Ambassador at Large on War Crimes, in President Clinton's State Department. (Disclosure: we hope to have Scheffer...

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05 Jan

I think there is little doubt where I stand on the merits of the Chevron litigation, so I am not going to get into the substance of the dispute here.  But I have an honest question that I am hoping someone will answer.  Let's assume, for sake of argument, that Chevron is correct to argue that the $18 billion judgment...

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04 Jan

Great news -- an appeals court in Ecuador has upheld the $18 billion damages award imposed on Chevron for the damage caused by its deliberate dumping of more than 18 billion gallons of toxic waste-water in the country, known as the "Rainforest Chernobyl": The lawsuit deals with pollution of the rainforest by energy company Texaco, which Chevron bought in 2001. Chevron...

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03 Jan

This post will seem like an extended plug for my own work, so apologies.  But I wanted to offer a few thoughts on the legal issues raised by Ruti's excellent post, the politics of which -- with one exception, noted below -- I completely share. First, Ruti asks whether Libya should be able to claim the right to try to Saif...

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26 Dec

The OTP is seeking an arrest warrant for Abdelrahim Mohamed Hussein, the Sudanese Defence Minister, in connection with a number of attacks on civilians in Darfur between August 2003 and March 2004.  The request alleges that Hussein is responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the attacks, but does not include a genocide charge.  According to Bill...

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23 Dec

A group of distinguished Nuremberg scholars, including myself (minus the distinguished part), have filed an amicus brief in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum on behalf of the petitioners.  The brief argues that although the Nuremberg trials themselves did not involve the prosecution of juridical persons such as corporations, a wide variety of Allied actions outside of judicial fora indicate that...

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15 Dec

Ashley Deeks, a fellow at Columbia and a former member of the Office of the Legal Adviser, has posted an essay on SSRN -- forthcoming in the Virginia Journal of International Law -- entitled "Unwilling or Unable: Toward an Normative Framework for Extra-Territorial Self-Defense."  Here is the abstract: Non-state actors, including terrorist groups, regularly launch attacks against states, often...

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12 Dec

Was the Durban climate conference a success or failure?  As always, the answer depends on one's frame of reference. As compared to the expectations going in, the outcome was more than I think most people thought possible.  In a pre-Durban paper entitled "W[h]ither the Kyoto Protocol," I identified three scenarios: (1) business-as-usual, with modest progress in developing the Copenhagen/Cancun framework and...

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07 Dec

That's the question asked by my friends at Wronging Rights, in response to a recent article in Time: TIME claims to have obtained an internal ICC memo showing that the Court is "compiling evidence of possible recent war crimes in southern Sudan, allegedly directed by Sudanese Defense Minister Abdelrahim Mohamed Hussein." Apparently, in addition to the Prosecutor's request...

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