In a little noticed vote, the U.S. defeated a resolution (8-22) that would have required the U.N. Human Rights Commission to request the U.S. government establish and impartial and independent fact-finding investigation into the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay (an account of the vote can be found here at the bottom of the release). China, Cuba, Sudan, and Zimbabwe...
Committee II of the Eleventh United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice held a workshop yesterday to review the international anti-terrorist legal framework. As I've discussed here and here, this is a surprisingly underdeveloped area of international law given the fairly widespread consensus on the subject among most states....
Columbia University's American Constitution Society hosted a discussion between Professors John Yoo (a leading constitutional and foreign relations scholar) and Jeremy Waldron (a distinguished Kantian legal philosopher) on legal aspects of the war on terrorism today, especially torture. As usual, tireless bloggers from Ex Post have "liveblogged" the debate here.Here are some of the highlights. The hardest question for Professor...
I plan to post quite a bit more on the continuing China-Japan row later this week, but I couldn't resist passing along these remarkable pictures from a Chinese "BBS" list with pictures of the some recent anti-Japanese protests in Shanghai. Just keep scrolling down, even if you don't read Chinese, you should easily get a sense of the rather...
I have held back from blogging on the Bolton nomination in part because we learned precious little (as Julian noted here) at his confirmation hearing about what, precisely, Bush II plans to do at, with, or through the United Nations. I think there is plenty in Bolton's prior writings and statements to demonstrate that he is a bad fit for...
Readers of this blog might be interested in this radio debate between Prof. Jack Goldsmith of Harvard and Judge Christopher Weeramantry, a former ICJ judge, on WBUR-Radio in Boston....
Adolfo Scilingo, a former Argentine Naval officer, was convicted by a Spanish court for crimes against humanity. This is the first such conviction under universal jurisdicition is Spain (that is, at issue here is not any croime against Spansih citizens or against the laws of Spain, per se, but rather acts that any country should be able to prosecute...
This report gives a bit more detail to the non-agreement agreement between the ICC Prosecutor and the Ugandan leaders who visited the Hague last week. The statements by the ICC Prosecutor shows the limits of his discretion under the ICC Statute and, perhaps, why the ICC will always be a potential obstacle to settlement of an ongoing conflict. The ICC...
In a piece of terrible timing, the Tokyo High Court has denied the appeal of a group of 10 Chinese plaintiffs seeking compensation for Japanese WWII atrocities. This decision comes just as the Japanese Foreign Minister left China without having resolved rising tensions and as the stocks of Japanese companies doing business in China plummet. Although I can't...
Last week, Nike disclosed a list of all 700 of its overseas production facilities -- including factories in China, Thailand, Mexico and Turkey. It has also admitted that abusive working conditions have been uncovered in several Nike facilities. All of this comes as part of Nike's settlement of the 1998 Kasky case alleging that Nike's earlier defenses of its labor...
Among the many criticisms of the ICC, is the idea that prosecution is not always the appropriate means through which to address atrocities and heal the societal wounds imposed by conflict. The Milosevic case, which Julian discussed earlier here, is but one example of how prosecution -- mired in technicalities, delayed for years and removed from the site of the...
The General Assembly endorsed by consensus Friday the International Convention on the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism . The treaty sets up useful legal definitions of nuclear materials and imposes obligations on signatories to pass laws outlawing nuclear terrorism, to cooperate in exchange of information on terrorists, and to prosecute or extradite alleged nuclear terrorists (but not extradition to...
