The U.S. government has announced that it will oppose the current proposal for a new Human Rights Council to take the place of the much-derided U.N. Commission on Human Rights. (The new proposal is here.) Although the U.S. has been pushing for a new Council, it is not happy with the current proposal, which would not guarantee the exclusion...
Following up on my earlier posts about Saddam and Serbia:Prosecutors at Saddam's trial introduced two important documents yesterday. The first is a memo from the Revolutionary Court, dated June 14, 1984, listing the names of 148 suspects that had been sentenced to death by hanging. The chief prosecutor, Jaafar al-Moussawi, said the signature on the memo was that of...
In what could turn out to be a very important ruling, a Nigerian court in Port Harcourt has ordered Royal Dutch Shell to pay $1.5 billion for the environmental damage its oil-refining activities have caused in the southern Niger delta region. CorpWatch:Local residents began to experience health problems soon after Shell Oil company injected a million litres of a...
My vote for the most important international law case of the month is Shell v. Ijaw Aborigines of Bayelsa State. The Federal High Court in Port Harcourt, Nigeria rendered its $1.5 billion dollar judgment against Shell on February 24, 2006. I have searched in vain for the text of the decision and will update the post once it becomes available....
This Friday, March 3, 2006, St. John’s Law School will host a conference entitled Federalism Past, Federalism Future: A Constitutional Law Symposium. The full brochure is available here and the symposium papers will be published this spring in a 20th anniversary issue of the St. John’s Journal of Legal Commentary.The Conference will have well-known Constitutional Law luminaries, such as Akhil...
Professor Curtis Bradley has put together a terrific conference at Duke Law School this week on Delegating Sovereignty. The presenters are leading law school and political science scholars. This is a topic that pops up in many contexts, including my own personal obsession with the ICJ (see my articles on the subject here and here) but also in many other...
The U.S. and Colombian governments have announced they have reached a bilateral free trade agreement. The USTR's announcement can be found here and a pdf summary of the agreement can be found here.As the NYT points out, a U.S-Colombia Free Trade Agreement will be the largest U.S. free trade agreement in the Western Hemisphere south of Mexico. Moreover, with...
Today, the ICJ opened public hearings in the long-anticipated case between Bosnia and Serbia over Serbia's alleged responsibility for genocide during the 1993-1999 Balkan wars. The ICJ has decided to make everything public and web-accessible. Hence, the opening argument of Bosnia's counsel is already available here. This case has a long and torturous procedural history. It was...
A report prepared for Mexico's President, Vicente Fox, has concluded that the Mexican government and military committed numerous crimes against humanity during its "scorched earth" campaign against alleged left-wing rebels between 1964 and 1982: The draft report's authors write: "The authoritarian attitude with which the Mexican state wished to control social dissent created a spiral of violence which...
The Supreme Court in the case of Ministry of Iran v. Elahi, rendered a rather insignificant decision last week regarding the FSIA and state instrumentalities. At issue was whether claimants could attach Iranian assets in the United States to satisfy various successful terrorism judgments. Problem was, the asset was an arbitral award in favor of the Iranian Ministry of Defense....
The New York Times has a very unusual human interest piece about a former Taliban ambassador who is now a student at Yale. It is an extraordinarily long piece that strives mightily to put Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi in the best positive light as a reformed member of the Taliban. It includes an interesting discussion of a 2001 debate Rahmatullah had...
Great interview with Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League over at the Jerusalem Post. He discusses the Mohammad cartoons, Jewish-Christian relations, anti-Semitism, the movie Munich, and the threat of Iran. Here are a few highlights:On Cartoons: "Humor definitely can play a useful role in exposing hypocrisy in controversial issues, particularly in getting young people to pay attention. The question is...
