Former State Department Legal Adviser Harold Koh spoke yesterday at the Oxford Union. His speech, "How to End the Forever War?" (link to .pdf) is a reflection on the Obama Administration's foreign policy, in particular in regards to the rule of law. It is also a talk set to contrast the Obama Administration's approach to international law and foreign policy...
[Milena Sterio holds a dual J.D./maitrise en droit degree, and she is Associate Professor of Law at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, where she specializes in International Law and International Criminal Law.] The Court of Appeal of Versailles, France, ruled last week on an important case regarding the civil liability of French companies for their role in the construction of a light...
[Jordan Wells is a third-year law student at New York University School of Law.] The discussion up to this point naturally has centered on the “touch and concern” language of the majority opinion and what that opinion and the concurrences mean for ATS cases involving law of nations violations that occur abroad. Relatively little analysis has focused on the original questions...
Internet communications companies have reported that Syria has been cut off of "internet communication with the rest of the world." The World Trade Organization has a new Director General: Roberto Azevedo. The ICC postponed Kenyan Vice President William Ruto and journalist Joshua Arap Sang's trial as the Prosecutor is seeking to add five witnesses and the Defense has requested to vacate the...
When I was writing my book on citizenship several years ago, I wanted to take on what I thought was a standard trope of American political discourse: "the rights and obligations of citizenship." Though it hardly seemed like an alien phrase, I had trouble finding good examples of its use by major political leaders. I won't have that problem any more. President...
Another extraordinary rendition case has been launched in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) that will be relevant to those following Guantanamo detainees: Abu Zubaydah v Poland involves the CIA’s black sites. The filings are available here. A press release by Interrights, co-counsel (with Joseph Margulies and the Polish firm Jankowski & Co.) describes the significance of the case as follows: The case...
Ted Cruz is running for president, and an election-addled media is training its sights on his nascent candidacy in the absence of many alternatives this early in the cycle. His birth outside the United States is inevitably raising the eligibility question. Cruz was born in Calgary to a US-citizen mother and a non-citizen father. Under section 301(g) of the Nationality Act,...
Senegal Justice Minister Aminate Toure and Chadian Justice Minister Jean-Bernard Badare agreed to allow Senegalese judges to investigate various situations in Chad ahead of the prosecution of former Chadian dictator Hissene Habre. Fifty countries and organisations are gathered in London for an international conference aimed at preventing Somalia from slipping back into abject lawlessness. North Korea has removed two missiles from launch...
The Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) recently released its 2012 annual report, which documents its remarkable institutional transformation. Established in 1899, the PCA is an intergovernmental organization based in the Peace Palace in The Hague. Although it has a long and interesting history, including housing the Iran – U.S. Claims Tribunal for a number of years, over the last 12 years the...
South Korea has dismissed the plan from North Korea to reopen the joint industrial complex shared by the two countries, calling the demands from Pyongyang "incomprehensible" and urging North Korea to come forward for dialogue rather than making such demands. The Mannheim Regional Court in Germany ruled in favor of Motorola Mobility, a subsidiary of Google, against Microsoft in a patent dispute. Nawaz Sharif,...
This according to the Commission of Inquiry on Syria, which has considerable investigative ability. Reuters: (Reuters) - U.N. human rights investigators have gathered testimony from casualties of Syria's civil war and medical staff indicating that rebel forces have used the nerve agent sarin, one of the lead investigators said on Sunday. The United Nations independent commission of inquiry on Syria has not yet seen...
It's the 1949 Geneva Convention on Road Traffic (text at p. 3 of pdf; here's the UN treaty collection history, signatories, reservations, etc.; here is the Wikisource text of the treaty, which on quick read is accurate) which seeks to promote road safety by establishing uniform rules across borders. This includes provisions for an international driving permit as well as for cross...
