In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Topics

26 Jul

Did Israel deliberately target a UN outpost? Secretary-General Kofi Annan called it an "apparently deliberate" strike that "deeply distressed" him. As quoted by CNN, he said in a statement This coordinated artillery and aerial attack on a long-established and clearly marked U.N. post at Khiyam occurred despite personal assurances given to me by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that U.N. positions...

|
26 Jul

Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review is charging that Justice Stevens' majority opinion in Hamdan has a factual mistake due to a misstatement in a brief co-authored by SCOTUSBlog founders Tom Goldstein and Amy Howe.* Justice Stevens' opinion dismisses speeches by Senators Kyl and Graham interpreting the Detainee Treatment Act to apply retroactively to Hamdan's case. In footnote 10 of...

|
25 Jul

Last week I suggested in this post that the philosophical underpinnings for human rights norms represents a synthesis of positivism and natural law. It embraces the prevailing view that international law is a secular discipline that requires positive evidence for its source material, but also reclaims elements of the Grotian tradition that recognize that in a pluralistic society natural...

|
25 Jul

The NYT recently ran an interesting article discussing how the Bush administration's policy of cutting military aid to countries that refuse to sign Article 98 agreements with the U.S. has undermined the war against terror in Africa: Last year, the United States cut off $13 million for training and equipping troops in Kenya, where operatives of Al Qaeda killed 224...

|
24 Jul

It may not be officially dead, but today the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations moved onto life support. In what effectively appears to be its death knell, the WTO suspended negotiations on all fronts, and press reports quote some negotiators as suggesting that it will be months, if not years, before they resume. But, as I mentioned...

|
24 Jul

I find Kevin's post to be quite illuminating as it focuses proportionality on the question on whether Israel's conduct is clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated. Which raises the question of whether we should view this conflict as narrowly focused or part of a broader struggle. The question of proportionality cannot...

|
24 Jul

Professor Edward Swaine at the University of Pennsylvania has just posted a great article on treaty reservations entitled Reserving. It is available for download here. His central thesis is that treaty reservations benefit non-reserving states, often in ways that are unappreciated. Here is the abstract: The law of treaty reservations - which enables states to ask that their...

|
24 Jul

I followed the recent discussion about proportionality jus in bello with great interest — and reluctantly agree with Professor Anderson that Louise Arbour’s position is inconsistent with Article 51 of Protocol I. It is also worth noting that her position is even less defensible in terms of the Rome Statute, because there are two critical differences between Article...

|