A New York federal court has dismissed the complaint by a Canadian who alleged he had been "rendered" to Syria by U.S. government officials in order to be tortured. Maher Arar had sued former U.S. Attorney General Ashcroft as well as a number of other U.S. officials alleging he has a right to damages under the Torture Victim Protection Act...
I'd like to welcome Professor Bill Dodge as a guest blogger at Opinio Juris. Bill teaches at UC Hastings College of Law and is an expert on international business and economic law, in particular the emerging law of NAFTA Chapter 11 disputes. He is co-author of one of the leading casebooks on transnational business law, and has also written extensively...
To follow up on Peggy's post about David Irving, it's worth noting that Article 6 of the Additional Protocol to the Convention on Cybercrime contains the following controversial provision:1. Each Party shall adopt such legislative measures as may be necessary to establish the following conduct as criminal offences under its domestic law, when committed intentionally and without...
London Times correspondent Roger Boyes has posted these interesting observations about the goings on in the Vienna courtroom where Briton David Irving pled guilty this morning to the criminal charge of denying the Holocaust. Irving faces up to ten years in jail for speeches he gave in Austria in 1989 in which he claimed that the Holocaust never happened:It's...
This story coming out of Britain is quite amazing: "Four out of 10 British Muslims want sharia law introduced into parts of the country, a survey reveals today...
The chief prosecutor in Saddam Hussein's trial said yesterday that Saddam could be executed "within months" if he is convicted -- which seems increasingly likely. Article 27 of the IST Statute provides that all sentences "must be executed within 30 days of the date when the judgment becomes final and non-appealable."The prosecutor's statement contradicts the assertion of some commentators...
The Washington Post has published a wonderful article on the Chinese government's failing attempt at Internet censorship. The overwhelming impression of the article is that, try as they might, the Chinese government is not going to be able to effectively censor information on the Internet. There are so many channels of information that the Chinese censors are flailing.The article is...
According to SwissInfo, the United Nations is upset with Switzerland for amending its Code pénal militaire suisse to restrict the country’s ability to prosecute war crimes committed abroad. Article 2 of the Swiss Military Penal Code provides that military tribunals have jurisdiction over civilians or members of foreign forces who commit violations of international law during armed conflict. ...
The official languages of the ICTR are English and French. The vast majority of the 1,500 witnesses who have testified before the tribunal, however, speak only Kinyarawanda, the African-Bantu language that is the most widely-spoken language in Rwanda. As the Hirondelle News Agency reports in a fascinating article, the fact that most of the testimony heard by the...
Two of America's leading scholars of foreign relations law, John Yoo and Jack Goldsmith, are co-hosting a day-long conference on Tuesday, February 21 at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington D.C (see here for registration details). The conference, entitled the "The Outsourcing of American Law" will feature Justice Antonin Scalia as the keynote speaker (gee, what do you think he...
Thad Anderson of outragedmoderates.org (and a St John’s Law student) has posted documents released under a Freedom of Information Act request he had made which include notes of DoD staffer Steven Cambone from meetings with Donald Rumsfeld on the afternoon and evening of September 11, 2001. Cambone’s notes were cited by the 9/11 Commission and by CBS.Anderson explains:The released notes...
In a decision bound to upset the US government and most Americans, an Italian appellate court has upheld a lower court's acquittal of three North African men accused of recruiting suicide bombers to attack US soldiers in Iraq. The men had been charged with international terrorism, a crime adopted in Italy following 9/11. The appellate court ruled that, in the...
