Today marks the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, one of the most ambitious international environmental treaties in world history. Whatever I might think of the merits of this project, the creation of a worldwide system of greenhouse gas emission regulation certainly is worthy of my interest as a scholar...
In a brief essay on Slate, David Luban argues that the OLC lawyers who drafted the infamous "torture memos" (discussed in earlier posts, here, here and here) have something in common with Lynne Stewart, who was convicted last week of material support for her client, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the Egyptian cleric serving a life sentence for his role in...
The General Assembly and Security Council approved the selection of Ronny Abraham to become a member of the International Court of Justice today. M. Abraham replaces Justice and former President of the Court Gilbert Guillaume, who resigned last Friday, and will serve out the rest of Guilliame's term, which expires in 2009. M. Abraham, a widely-respected French international lawyer, takes...
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Bob Jacobson, a partner in New Rule Sets Project, LLC (the consulting firm started by Tom Barnett) and the Managing Editor of "Rule Set Reset," a journal that expands on the ideas of The Pentagon's New Map, has written reacting to my post comparing and contrasting the idea of "rule sets" to the lawyer's conception of international law. Bob writes...
Gregg Easterbrook, no patsy for the Bush Administration, has a terrific column in this week's New Republic Online ($) pointing out that amid all the hoopla tomorrow over the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol, the Bush EPA has quietly stitched together an international plan to reduce potential global warming gases in roughly the same amounts as Kyoto. According...
While the NYT and Samantha Power have been fretting about the U.S. opposition to an ICC referral for Sudan, the U.S. (apparently listening to the wise counsel of Peggy and/or Hillary Clinton) has moved ahead with a draft Security Council Resolution calling for a 10,000-man peacekeeping force for Sudan as well as various other measures. This will not solve everything...
Is the Senate finally entering the fray on the torture debate? It is being reported that the Senate intelligence committee may be moving toward opening an investigation of CIA detention and interrogation techniques, as well as the CIA practice of rendition, whereby detainees are sent to third countries. If a formal investigation happens (which will only come about if there...
With the NATO summit only 8 days away, in a speech in Germany yesterday, Senator Hillary Clinton called for a direct role for NATO to stop the killing in Darfur. (For the foreign policy wonks out there, it is interesting to note that she made public the fact that she got help on the speech from Richard Holbrooke, Sandy Berger...
Japan announced today that it would allow fishing expeditions to Okinotorishima, an obscure island 1000 miles southeast of Japan. For Law of the Sea aficionados, this sets up a pending battle over the size of Japan's "exclusive economic zone" because if Okinotorishima is merely some "rocks" (as China says), Japan's EEZ is substantially smaller than it currently claims. Countries have...
As further reports of UN peacekeeper atrocities continue to flow out of the D.R. Congo, an interesting legal puzzle arises: Can those peacekeepers be prosecuted for war crimes by the ICC? The answer is probably yes, no thanks to the U.S., which has been introducing annual resolutions in the Security Council granting immunity to UN peacekeepers since 2002, but which...
As the ICC gears up to issue its first arrest warrants against rebel leaders in Uganda, church leaders there are warning that the warrants could upset already fraying peace negotiations. I don't know anything about the Ugandan situation except that the Ugandan government was the one that referred the case to the ICC, has been trying to withdraw the...
