In association with the International Commission of Jurists

General

22 Aug

The Second Circuit's decision in Balintulo v. Daimler* (already discussed at length by John Bellinger at Lawfare) is one of the first major U.S.court opinions to apply the Supreme Court's decision in Kiobel.  It is pretty much a complete smackdown of the ATS plaintiffs, and for any hopes they might have that the Kiobel decision's bar on extraterritoriality for ATS suits...

|
22 Aug

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces bombarded rebel-held suburbs of Damascus today, keeping up pressure on the besieged region a day after the opposition accused the army of gassing hundreds in a chemical weapons attack. In response, the U.N. Security Council said it was necessary to clarify the alleged chemical weapons attack in the suburbs of Damascus, but stopped short of explicitly...

|
21 Aug

Japan will dramatically raise its warning about the severity of a toxic water leak at the Fukushima nuclear plant today, upgrading the threat from a level 1 "anomaly" to a level three "serious incident" on an international scale for radiological releases. The British government, accused of abusing media freedom, has said police were right to detain a journalist's partner if they thought...

|
20 Aug

The new issue of Foreign Affairs has an article by David Kaye, entitled "Stealth Multilateralism." He begins the piece by describing the point of view of the "sovereigntists," (often conservative Republicans) who view treaty-making as a threat to national sovereignty.  (See, for example,  this recent post by Peter on sovereigntist views.) After arguing that treaty-making is actually an expression of sovereignty, Kaye...

|
20 Aug

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Monday he was "deeply disturbed" by the deaths in custody of 37 supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and condemned an ambush by Islamist militants that killed 25 Egyptian policemen. A leading diplomat from the U.S. State Department and the U.S. ambassador to Syria will meet with a Russian delegation in The Hague next week to...

|
19 Aug

British authorities used anti-terrorism powers yesterday to detain Glenn Grenwald's partner (Greenwald is the journalist with close links to Edward Snowden, the former U.S. spy agency contractor who has been granted asylum by Russia), as he passed through London's Heathrow airport. Greenwald's reaction is here, calling the incident "a failed attempt at intimidation.' A defense lawyer who gained rare access to...

|
17 Aug

This week on Opinio Juris, Kevin welcomed the new international criminal law blog Beyond The Hague to the blogosphere and sparked much debate with his post based on Judge Harhoff's recent comments about the ICTY Appeals Chamber's Perisic adoption of the specific-direction requirement and followed-up with a second post on the topic clarifying what the specific-direction requirement entails. Kevin also questioned the latest in...

|
15 Aug

The United Nations Secretary General’s fifth Report on the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) was released last week.  This Report is titled “State Responsibility and Prevention” and focuses generally on governance mechanisms and early warning.  It also mentions the situation in Syria, stating that “[r]ecent events, including in the Syrian Arab Republic, underline the vital importance of early action to prevent...

|
15 Aug

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan called for the U.N. Security Council to convene quickly and act after what he described as a massacre in Egypt. The UN has said the departure of a team of chemical weapons inspectors to Syria was "imminent." UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has insisted that US drone strikes must operate within international law. International medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres has announced...

|
14 Aug

North and South Korea are holding fresh talks on reopening the Kaesong joint industrial park, ahead of South Korea-US military exercises next week. United Nations inspectors are investigating a North Korean ship caught carrying arms from Cuba amid suspicion that the vessel is in breach of a wide-ranging arms embargo on North Korea. British energy giant BP is suing the US government...

|
13 Aug

UK authorities announced that they are considering legal action against Spain to force the country to loosen border controls in Gibraltar. In response, a Spanish foreign minister said that Spain will not back down on implementing tighter controls at its border with the disputed British territory of Gibraltar, escalating the row between the two countries. U.S. hopes of landing a coveted deal worth...

|
12 Aug

India and Pakistan have exchanged more gunfire across the disputed border in Kashmir, as a 10-year ceasefire frays over accusations of killings of soldiers deployed on the frontline. Israel published a list of 26 Palestinian prisoners set to go free within days, some after spending more than two decades behind bars, in the first stage of a deal that led to a...

|