In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Organizations

10 Feb

The case involves Luis Moreno-Ocampo's decision to remove Ekkehard Witkopf, then a Senior Trial Lawyer with the OTP, from Lubanga.  The following paragraphs from the ILO's judgment best summarize what happened: On 15 December 2008 the Deputy Prosecutor informed  the  complainant orally that the Executive Committee had decided that he would no longer lead the trial of the Lubanga case on...

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07 Feb

[Ingrid Wuerth is Professor of Law at Vanderbilt Law School and Director of Vanderbilt's International Legal Studies Program.] The International Court of Justice has issued its judgment in Jurisdictional Immunities of the State (Germany v. Italy: Greece Intervening). Germany won, as most observers had predicted. The dispute arose out of a series of decisions by Italian national courts...

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01 Feb

It's rare that I defend the ICTY, but I feel compelled to do so here.  As discussed in this blog post by Laurie Blank, a group of experts in military law have released a report attacking the Trial Chamber's judgment in Prosecutor v. Gotovina for allegedly misapplying basic IHL rules regarding targeting.  Unfortunately, the report fundamentally misstates what the Trial...

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22 Jan

The Pre-Trial Chamber II (PTC) has confirmed the charges against 4 of the 6 defendants in the Kenya cases.  The following is from the PTC's oral summary of their decision: Summary of Decision in Case 1 I will now turn to the merits of Case 1, the Prosecutor v. William Samoei Ruto, Henry Kiprono Kosgey and Joshua Arap Sang...

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20 Jan

It's difficult to accuse these guys of being soft on Tehran, so it's hard to quibble with their conclusion: The intelligence assessment Israeli officials will present later this week to Dempsey indicates that Iran has not yet decided whether to make a nuclear bomb. The Israeli view is that while Iran continues to improve its nuclear capabilities, it has...

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18 Jan

Gabor Rona posted a response to Jens Ohlin yesterday.  Jens responded at LieberCode -- and now Gabor has responded to Jens's response (and John Dehn's comment on his OJ post).  Here is what Jens wrote (reposted with permission): Many thanks to Gabor Rona for taking the time to continue this conversation.  There’s a lot in Rona’s post, but I want to...

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17 Jan

Jens Ohlin has continued the conversation about IHL and IHRL at LieberCode.  Here is a snippet, self-servingly chosen because I want to comment on it: It strikes me as curious that human rights activists are so quick to cabin CIL application of the IHL rules of IAC to NIAC.  To my ear, it is one of the great advancements...

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17 Jan

The following is a guest-post by Gabor Rona, the International Legal Director of Human Rights First.  It is a response to a post at LieberCode by Jens Ohlin, a Professor at Cornell Law School, that argues international human rights law (IHRL) does not apply in armed conflict, because it is displaced by international humanitarian law (IHL). Prof. Ohlin’s conclusion that IHRL...

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16 Jan

There has been much debate the past couple of days about whether the bomb attacks that have killed at least three Iranian nuclear scientists since 2010 qualify as terrorism.  Glenn Greenwald and Kevin Drum on the left and Andrew Sullivan on the right say "yes"; many of their readers (see Greenwald here) and the editor of Technology Review say "no." ...

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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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