The other day, we said the short answer is that the killing of Osama bin Laden was lawful. Some have asked for a bit more detail in the answer. We can’t give the full answer, of course, but we can give a slightly longer one than we did. A full...
It’s only been a few days since Osama bin Laden was killed in a U.S. military assault on his compound in Pakistan. And in those few days, the internet has been buzzing with discussions, debates and hand-wringing over whether the U.S. acted lawfully. We’ve been reading thoughts of people on...
We started yet another trial this week, and it’s looking like it will continue into the first week of April. Not our longest trial ever, but fairly lengthy for a state case. But at least it’ll be over before the trial of Raj Rajaratnam, which also began this week, and...
On our main website, we wrote a brief primer on international law, mostly for our own enjoyment. (The same reason why we write this blog, actually.) To our constant amazement, it gets cited heavily around the internet, and has been on the syllabus of at least a couple law school...
The International Criminal Court came into being almost 8 years ago. It has jurisdiction to prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and criminal aggression. Well, that is, it has jurisdiction to prosecute those crimes once they’ve been defined. And to date, they haven’t yet come up with a definition...
Last year, for reasons we’re not entirely clear on, Hamas-led Palestinians started firing rockets and mortars at civilian populations in Israel. Israel put up with it for a while, but then after Christmas it finally responded with a bunch of air strikes on targets in the Hams-controlled Gaza region, and...
Although the nation of Sierra Leone has had an extradition treaty with the United States in effect since 1935, the African country has never complied with a single request for extradition. Until yesterday, that is. Its government never complied with such requests, one might argue, because there really was no...
Starting in November, we’ve predicted two alternative reactions that Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir could have if the ICC issued an arrest warrant. On the one hand, he could start acting all cooperative, and thereby appease a U.N. Security Council that wants any excuse to avoid ICC action here. On the...
Here in Manhattan, we like to brag that we’ve got the busiest courthouse in the world. But at least the system can handle it. According to Tuesday report from the chief justice of the New Delhi High Court, however, the courts in India are all just as busy, but the...
As previously reported, the ICC prosecution of Sudan’s leader Omar al-Bashir has had its share of challenges. Yesterday, the African Union threw another monkey wrench into an already shaky machinery. The African Union is an international organization of all African nations except Morocco. The organization, which is expected to name...
A couple of weeks ago, we reported that Omar al-Bashir had announced a unilateral ceasefire in an attempt to avoid being formally charged by the International Criminal Court. ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo had asked that al-Bashir be charged personally with multiple counts of genocide, crimes against humanity, and...
Omar al-Bashir seized power of the Sudan in 1989, and has ruled ever since as the military dictator of one of Africa’s most ruthless regimes. In the Darfur region of western Sudan, a war has raged for about five years, with government troops and proxy fighters committing massive bloodshed...
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