As reported here, kidnapped pacifist Tom Fox was found slain in Iraq this week. He was one of four members of the organization called Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) who were held hostage by a militant Islamic group known as the Swords of Righteousness Brigade. The CPT released a statement yesterday that struck me as quite remarkable. Not a single negative...
In response to the aforementioned U.S. Human Rights report, China released its own report on the situation of human rights in the United States. It paints a horrible picture indeed and one wonders how Americans can survive amid the endemic poverty and pervasive violent crime. One further wonders why immigrants from China and elsewhere continue to move to...
On Wednesday the State Department issued its annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. The full text is available here. Here is an excerpt from the Introduction: To be sure, violations of human rights and miscarriages of justice can and do occur in democratic countries. No governmental system is without flaws. Human rights conditions in democracies across...
A few weeks ago, I discussed the critical role accurate translations play in international trials. A recent decision by the ICTY illustrates the point: largely due to a translation error involving a single word, the Appeals Chamber has reduced the sentence of Momir Nikolic, a security and intelligence officer at Srebrenica, from 27 to 20 years. Nikolic was...
A federal district court has issued an interesting decision on the status of Cuban refugees who made it to dry land on the coast of Florida. The question at issue in Movimiento Democracia v. Chertoff, 2006 WL 521558, was whether landing on the old Seven Mile Bridge in the Florida Keys constituted "arrival" in the United States within the meaning...
Treaties for the protection of investment are not just for less developed countries anymore. The United States has included chapters on investor protection in its free trade agreements with Canada (NAFTA) and Australia (AUSFTA), and likely will do so in its agreement with South Korea currently under negotiation. While Korean investment in the United States is nowhere near the scale...
Encouraging news out of Northern Ireland: according to the Independent Monitoring Commission, established by the British and Irish governments in early 2004 to help promote the creation...
As reported here, Larry Johnson has been named the United Nations Secretary-General for Legal Affairs, essentially one of the top lawyers at the U.N. Larry is Professor of Global Affairs at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs and Visiting Professor of International Law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. Previously, Johnson was Visiting...
On February 27th, the Algerian cabinet, with President Abdelaziz Bouteflika presiding, approved a “Decree Implementing the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation." The key provisions are Articles 44 and 45: Article 44: Citizens who, through their involvement or their determination, contributed to saving Algeria and protecting the nation’s institutions, performed acts of patriotism. Article 45: No legal proceedings may be...
Opinio Juris readers enjoy (or suffer) through my views on international law stuff on a near-daily basis. Today, readers of the LA Times get the same (questionable) benefit in the form of my op-ed about the Supreme Court's cases assessing whether the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations creates a judicially enforceable private right of action. (Unhappily, the headline for...
Last year the ACLU and Human Rights First sued Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for responsibility in the abuses at Abu Ghraib, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay. After much legal wrangling, the parties have finally agreed on a forum (the U.S. District Court in Washington D.C.). Monday, Rumsfeld filed this motion seeking to dismiss the lawsuit. As I argued in...
On Friday, March 3, there was a workshop on territoriality at UCLA School of Law, organized by Professor Kal Raustiala. The workshop brought together law professors, political scientists, and others to discuss changing notions of territoriality. What became apparent to this participant is that territoriality is not, in the words of another participant, a “holistic concept.” Although territorial borders have...
