In association with the International Commission of Jurists

General

02 Mar

Today in San Francisco there is a meeting of business leaders to discuss corporate social responsibility. It is part of the U.N. Global Compact, the largest volunteer initiative to promote ten universal principles relating to human rights, labor standards, environment, and anti-corruption. Part of that discussion will address the recently published McKinsey survey of business executives on business and society....

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02 Mar

With all the recent talk of electronic surveillance, the NSA, and FISA, I want to point out a sidebar to the history of surveillance and cryptography. Three encoded Nazi messages—products of the famed Enigma encryption system—that had gone unbroken since WWII are being deciphered by a group of amateurs using networked computers via the Internet. The first message...

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02 Mar

As we relaunch Opinio Juris at our new site, we are all extremely pleased to welcome our newest permanent blog contributor, Professor Kevin Heller. Since we began our blog just over a year ago, Kevin has been a valuable commentator, informal adviser, and friend to Opino Juris. As our readers have noted, he has been a terrific guest writer...

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01 Mar

Pope Benedict XVI issued his Ash Wednesday sermon today and focused on development and world poverty. Here is an excerpt: "Even in this era of global interdependence, it is clear that no economic, social, or political project can replace that gift of self to another through which charity is expressed. Those who act according to the logic of the Gospel...

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01 Mar

In the wake of the murder of al-Arabiya correspondent Atwar Bahjat and two of her colleagues, a journalist asked President Jalal Talabani to permit journalists working in Iraq to carry weapons in self-defense. "Send me an official request and I will approve it and inform concerned agencies to give you the right to carry arms," President Talabani replied.The exchange...

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01 Mar

Sarah Cleveland has just published a very significant article in the Yale Journal of International Law entitled "Our International Constitution." Cleveland is a great writer and her article is a pleasure to read, even though I sharply differ with her on the appropriateness of using international law to interpret constitutional guarantees (see my articles here, here and here).Cleveland is...

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28 Feb

The following is a quick summary of the ICC's work to date, courtesy of the International Justice Tribune:Since its creation in July 2002, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has received 1,732 pieces of communication about crimes committed in 139 countries. According to the second summary published by the office of the prosecutor on February 10, 60% of the information came...

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28 Feb

The new African Court of Human and People's Rights, which was established as Africa's new regional international court, will sit in Arusha, Tanzania. This is not exactly a surprise. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda already sits there and its mandate will expire in 2008, so it makes a lot of sense to take advantage of the existing...

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28 Feb

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...

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