On Thursday night I had the privilege of participating in a live webinar on targeted killing and Al-Aulaqi held by the Harvard Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research. The other participants included Yale's Andrew March, Emory's Laurie Blank, and Seton Hall's Jonathan Hafetz. It was a wonderful, wide-ranging discussion, one that focused not only on the international-law aspects of...
As a member of the U.S. State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Law, I was asked to give my reactions to the International Law Commission’s release, on first reading, of a set of proposed articles on the Responsibility of International Organizations. (For the ILC’s report containing these draft articles and commentaries, see here). I was probably asked to undertake this...
Chuck Lane makes this case for rejecting a "cry fire" analogy on Koran burning, as suggested by Justice Breyer in a book-flacking recent interview with George Stephanopoulos. The logic is pretty clear: that where an expressive act creates an immediate danger, it's not constitutionally protected. If the burning of a Koran in Florida was going to cost lives in Afghanistan,...
Next week the ICJ will have oral proceedings in the case Application of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Georgia v. Russian Federation). The .pdf of the press release is here. As far as I can tell, unlike in the Kosovo proceedings, there will not be an internet simulcast. (The Kosovo simulcast was very...
Mike Scharf and Paul Williams have published an interesting collection of recollections and colloquys among all ten living State Department legal advisers, Shaping Foreign Policy in Times of Crisis: The Role of International Law and the State Department Legal Adviser, released by Cambridge UP earlier this year. In addition to essays from each, recounting particular episodes from their tenures, there...
There are some interesting comments in the live blog of the UNCTAD International Investment Agreements Conference from the likes of Todd Weiler, Susan Franck, and Jason Yackee. (You can also watch the proceedings here). Much substance in the coverage, but also some fun. Here's a taste: Todd Weiler: As I see Prof Franck is performing the live blog function,...
Julian's latest snide swipe at the ICC focuses on Bashir's visit to Kenya, which he describes as a "slap in the face to the ICC Prosecutor and the defenders of the Bashir arrest warrant." Not surprisingly, Julian conveniently fails to mention the details of Bashir's visit: Sudanese President Omar al Bashir curiously flew in through Nairobi’s Wilson Airport, and ...
So says a draft UN report that studied events in the Congo between 1993 and 2008: An exhaustive U.N. investigation into the history of violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo has concluded that the Rwandan military and its allies carried out hundreds of large-scale killings of ethnic Hutu refugees during the 1990s that amounted to war crimes,...
The report is here. I have neither the time nor the stomach to fully engage with it, but I couldn't let paragraph 82 pass without comment: 82. The United States is currently at war with Al Qaeda and its associated forces. President Obama has made clear that the United States is fully committed to complying with the Constitution and with all...
So reports Reuters: The Dutch prosecutor's office said on Friday it would look into whether Dutch peacekeeping soldiers should face criminal charges over the 1995 massacre in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica. About 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed at Srebrenica after Bosnian Serb forces overran the United Nations-protected enclave where Dutch troops were ...
Two commenters on my previous post on Kagame's increasing authoritarianism questioned whether Rwanda arrested Peter Erlinder because of his representation of defendants at the ICTR. Fortuitously, Kate Gibson -- my colleague on the Karadzic case and a defense attorney at the ICTR -- has just published an ASIL Insight on the arrest that supports my claim. Here is a taste...
