Mark Kersten has a very interesting post up over at his blog Justice in Conflict, titled “Why the ICC Should Think Twice before Investigating Conflicts with Roots Before 2002.” In it, he reflects on the temporal limits of the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction, and more specifically on the consequences of the ICC’s involvement in conflicts that [...]
After nearly a month of unplanned hiatus due to a combination of illness, work and traveling, it is time to come back to the blog and Twitter, both of which I have deserted for the past weeks. I have much catching up to do before I can start writing again – I intend to prepare [...]
Several days ago, Professor Eric A. Posner of the University of Chicago wrote an essay in the conservative bi-monthly The National Interest, ‘Dockets of War,’ in which he argues that the threat of “lawfare,” so often discussed in the United States as a potential threat to American interests in particular abroad, is “over-hyped.” As an international [...]
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
The Charles Taylor trial is coming to an end over at the Special Court for Sierra Leone, with one (final?) dramatic rebound in judicial proceedings already familiar with drama (see my previous post on Naomi Campbell’s rather bizarre testimony). From BBC News: A lawyer for Liberian ex-President Charles Taylor has walked out of court during [...]
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
The United Nations Special Tribunal for Lebanon, tasked with investigating and judging those responsible for the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, met yesterday to define some key legal terms, not least of which to determine what constitutes an “act of terrorism.” From the Associated Press: Lawyers and judges at a U.N.-backed tribunal [...]
A letter to the International Herald Tribune (published on the New York Times website) has caught my attention. The author writes: History shows that one corrupt regime is usually followed by another. This is so because corrupt countries are often given no chance to build up bureaucracies that can contain corruption. Hence, revolutions tend to [...]
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
David Bosco is raising the alarm on his excellent blog The Multilateralist over at Foreign Policy on some potentially very bad news for the international criminal justice project, regarding the ICC’s difficulties in Africa and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon’s delicate mission in an explosive-as-ever Lebanon. The post is not very long, so it is difficult for [...]
Saturday, November 27, 2010
The Economist, one of my favorite sources for news and analysis, has a great piece on international justice in this week’s edition, that offers a very much on-the-spot assessment on the status of international criminal justice and the challenges ahead. Although the article starts by explaining that international criminal justice, whether through the International Criminal [...]
As promised last week, I am giving you a rapid commentary of the Appeals Chamber’s decision in the Lubanga Trial at the International Criminal Court. I was in the media center of the ICC when Judge Sang-Hyun Song read out a summary of the decisions (the full, authoritative written version of which you can find [...]
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
I just had a full and very interesting day, and I felt like I needed to share some thoughts here on the blog in two different posts – relating to two different events – but that share the same theme: the problems international justice encounters when its meets “foreign” culture. There is of course a [...]
