Today’s New York Times has a fascinating story about efforts among the parties to the Montreal Protocol to accelerate the phase-out of HCFCs, chemicals which it turns out not only deplete the ozone layer, but may have a far greater impact on climate change than carbon dioxide emissions. The story references a report published last week under the auspices...
In a welcome move, Egypt has named its first female judges:Mukbil Shakir, the head of the Supreme Judicial Council, appointed 31 women to judge or chief judge positions in Egypt's courts, the official Middle East News Agency said, quoting Shakir's decree. The move is expected to give a boost to President Hosni Mubarak's political and social reforms that have been widely...
As expected, Sudan and the Organization of the Islamic Conference have rejected the report prepared by the Human Rights Council's assessment mission to Darfur, and they want the Council to do the same. (See Reuters and AP stories.) Having not received the desired exculpation of Sudan from the current team, they say that a new team, approved by the Sudanese...
In my recent article on the role of foreign relations in statutory interpretation (available for download here), I made an argument that Charming Betsy is grounded in separation of powers concerns and that this means, among other things, that the Youngstown categories should be read in light of Charming Betsy. Here is what I argued: It is now accepted that...
Just when you might have thought it a little safer to go out at night, we have a strong offensive articulation of a sovereignty-based foreign policy to twin with the more traditional defensive one. Anna Simons and her co-authors set out “The Sovereignty Solution” in the latest edition of The American Interest (unfortunately available neither online or Lexis, but...
The U.S. announced last week that it again would not seek election to the Council. Despite the body’s serious flaws, UN Watch had urged the U.S. to run, believing that it could better fight for improvements from the inside. Although the U.S. can be—and has been—an active non-member, membership would allow it to do more. (Only members can...
Last month, a British military judge dismissed charges against five of seven British soldiers accused of mistreating an Iraqi prisoner who died in their custody. At the time, the judge refused to explain the reasoning behind his decision to take the case away from the seven-officer jury, saying only that the prosecution had failed to introduce evidence of the...
Last summer, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Sanchez-Llamas v. Oregon, which resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court refusing to follow an ICJ treaty interpretation, even though the ICJ had compulsory jurisdiction to interpret that treaty. A few months later, Germany's highest constitutional court (the Bundesverfassungsgericht) resolved a similar conflict between domestic and ICJ interpretations by following the ICJ. ...
NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof has been a tireless supporter of international efforts to intervene in the Sudan-Darfur crisis. Today, he has an column (subscription req'd) agreeing with something I said last week about the only plausible "solution" to the Darfur crisis: [T]he top priority for Darfur is something that few people talk about — a negotiated peace agreement. Peacekeepers...
The differential treatment of Israel and Sudan by the Human Rights Council in 2006 extends not only to the findings that its resolutions made (discussed in my previous post), but also to the actions that they mandated. All four resolutions from the Council’s four special sessions established investigatory missions, but they did so in very different ways. ...
I didn't notice until today this op-ed by Professor Ruth Wedgwood criticizing the ICJ's Bosnia Genocide judgment. For those who aren't avid NYT readers, here is her basic legal criticism: (Continue Reading) The World Court also insists that unless Belgrade gave “direct orders” for particular operations or the Bosnian Serbs were “completely dependent” on Belgrade, there is no liability at all....
Our criticism of the Human Rights Council’s eight resolutions against Israel is not to say that Israel’s human rights record should be immune from criticism. To the contrary, Israel should be held accountable for its human rights abuses, as should every other UN member state. The problem is that at the Council, Israel is not treated like any other UN...
