Germany's Constitutional Court has invalidated a law that would have permitted the German government to shoot down a hijacked plane if that plane was being used as a weapon endangering other people, like in the September 11 attacks. The Court found that the German law "infringed the right to life and human dignity" guaranteed by the German equivalent of a...
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is reporting that prosecutors in Saddam Hussein's trial have produced written orders allegedly signed by Saddam ordering the execution of 140 Shiites in Dujail in 1982. If so, the evidence provides the first concrete link between Saddam and the executions; although numerous witnesses have described how Iraqi 's security forces killed the Shiites in "response"...
On a (somewhat) lighter note, France’s Conseil Constitutionnel has struck down a provision in a 2005 law that required history teachers to stress the “positive aspects” of French colonialism. The Council, which was established in 1958 and is responsible for reviewing the consistency of Acts of Parliament with the Constitution, held that the enacting the provision was outside competence...
Norway has agreed to try a suspect accused of participating in the 1994 Rwanda genocide. Norway will try the Rwandan Hutu Michel Bagaragaza in its own courts, accepting a request by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (the ICTR), to take over for the backlogged court. Bagaragaza, a former tea industry leader, is accused of organizing his employees...
Today we learn that Islamic fundamentalists are burning fast-food restaurants in Pakistan to protest the Danish cartoons. It is hard to ever feel sorry for McDonalds, but I do today. I checked the McDonald's menu for Pakistan, including the "McArabia," and could not find anything that was particularly offensive to the Prophet. I guess it was the cheese Danishes....
Christiana Ochoa of Indiana Law School has just published in the University of Cincinnati Law Review an interesting article entitled, Towards a Cosmopolitian Vision of International Law. The article and an abstract is available on SSRN here. The article addresses Sosa and the role of the judiciary in establishing customary international law.But it is Part VI that really...
Given how unpopular the UN seems to be these days in the US, the results of a recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll question about Iran are rather surprising (courtesy of Think Progress):How confident are you in the Bush administration’s ability to handle the situation in Iran? Very or Somewhat Likely: 45% Not Too Confident or Not At All Confident: 55% How...
Though the news is a couple of weeks old, it’s worth calling attention to a unanimous decision by the European Court of Human Rights Court that the Russian Federation violated the European Convention on Human Rights by allowing local police to torture a Russian citizen, Aleksey Mikheyev, and by subsequently failing to adequately investigate his allegations of mistreatment. The...
U.S. gold medalist Joey Cheek has announced he will donate all of his $25,000 award (from the U.S. Olympic Committee) to a foundation providing aid to children injured by the war in Darfur, Sudan. Cheek actually had a prepared statement, apparently drafted the night before his race. Talk about confidence! Still, his heart is obviously in the right place and...
Okay, you think the title is a stretch. But if you look behind the history of the holiday you may conclude that Valentine's Day has less to do with love than war. Legend has it that under the reign of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius Claudius Gothicus (A.D. 214-270) (not the Marcus Aurelius played by Richard Harris in Gladiator, but it's...
I completely agree with Julian's dire assessment of the UN Human Rights Commission. But before we get too carried away lauding the U.S.'s reform efforts, it's worth noting that Ambassador Bolton's most recent suggestion for "reform" is to guarantee all five permanent members of the Security Council permanent seats (presumably with veto power) on the new Human Rights Council,...
Speaking of the semi-ridiculous U.N. Human Rights Commission, I somehow missed this statement last week from the U.S. criticizing the existing proposal to reform the Commission. Talk about an easy position to develop. The U.S. is holding out for a new Human Rights Council that will have human rights standards for nations sitting on the new council. That appears to...
