In his first major address as Chief Justice, on Wednesday John Roberts addressed a crowd of 1,000 participants at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley. Details of the speech are available here. The Chief Justice also addressed a group of about 100 Pepperdine law students immediately prior to the speech. (It doesn't hurt when your current dean was the Chief...
The NYT notes that Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and the Defense Department are considering plans to resume military aid to certain Latin American countries that had defied U.S. demands that it exempt U.S. soldiers from the ICC's jurisdiction. Along with the U.S. agreement to refer Sudan to the ICC, this latest move suggests that the U.S. is adopting...
Slobodan Milosevic is dead. The final chapter in European liberation from Communist rule is over. If you must read the details of his death, go to the BBC here. But far more interesting is their insightful obituary of the butcher of the Balkins. Paddy Ashdown has it right, "There is no doubt that of the evil that stalked the...
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...
