This seems to be cryptography’s breakout year. First we hAd all that FISA fun, then the breathleSs anticipation of the movIe release of the Da Vinci Code, and now the Smithy Code! Yes, Friends, it seems that Judge Smith, the witty High Court judge presiding over the recent U.K. copyright infringement trial against Da Vinci Code author Dan brown, has...
The Third Circuit this week rendered an interesting and unusual case on The Hague Convention on The Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. In Karkkainen v. Kovalchuk, the Third Circuit was faced with a precocious and intelligent eleven-year-old who had lived with her mother and stepfather in Finland. But Maria Kovalchuk increasingly grew to love the United States when...
Sometimes, it is just too easy to take potshots at the U.N. Here is another example, courtesy of Fox News: Auditors from the U.N.’s investigative arm, the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), are currently putting the last touches on an investigative report that has taken months to complete, and that aims to determine exactly what happened — and why —...
The ICJ has a new case. Today the Commonwealth of Dominica brought a case against Switzerland to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), principal judicial organ of the United Nations, concerning alleged violations by Switzerland of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations as well as of other international instruments and rules, with respect to a diplomatic envoy of Dominica to the...
The never-ending U.S.-Canada trade fight over lumber subsidies may actually be ending, according to this Maclean's report. The framework includes a cap on Canada's share of the U.S. lumber market, a border tax and the return of 78 per cent of the $5 billion in punitive duties collected by U.S. Customs since May 2002. Officials from the major producing provinces...
The company that makes and sells this t-shirt — to which I refuse to link out of principle — sponsors such high-profile conservative blogs as Instapundit, Powerline, Hugh Hewitt, Captain's Quarters, and Michelle Malkin. No additional commentary necessary. Sad tip-of-the-hat: Digby. ...
The UN Security Council passed Resolution 1672 yesterday, imposing sanctions yesterday on four Sudanese considered responsible for the the atrocities in Darfur. The Resolution passed 12-0, with China, Russia and Qatar abstaining on the ground that sanctions would disrupt the reconciliation process. The sanctioned individuals are Major General Gaffar Mohamed Elhassan, commander of the Western Military Region for the Sudanese...
Fiona de Londras of Mental Meanderings, who is a Ph.D. student at the University of Dublin Cork, has a nice post on the struggles of being a young and budding scholar. "The anxiety connected with the notion of having something in print for ever and ever that might be wrong is too much. I have never published anything internationally before....
Posada's latest bid for freedom — applying for U.S. citizenship. His interview is set for next week. ...
UVA Law School announced today that one of its graduates, Najwa Nabti, has won the inaugural Orrick International Law Fellowship to serve as a law clerk to the International Court of Justice. The Orrick International Law Fellowship is sponsored by Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, an international law firm with offices in the United States, Europe and Japan, and is...
Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. This day brings my thoughts back to the Holocaust restitution movement, which I have followed closely for ten years. Some have questioned the propriety of Holocaust restitution as the final chapter in the history of the Holocaust. But I have little qualms in concluding that Holocaust restitution has been a good and noble...
A fascinating and extremely important trial began yesterday at the Hague. The defendant, Gus Kouwenhoven, is charged with committing various war crimes against Liberians and violating a UN arms embargo. Kouwenhoven, who is Dutch, was the general manager of the Oriental Timber Company, Liberia's largest timber company while Charles Taylor was in power. While in that...
