Today is International Criminal Justice Day. The Assembly of the States Parties of the International Criminal Court (ICC) adopted this date during the Review Conference of the Rome Statute held in Kampala, Uganda in June 2010. It marks the anniversary of the adoption of the Rome Statute, the treaty that founded the ICC. The treaty also defines the types of international crimes that individuals can be charged with committing: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the recently defined crime of aggression. The day aims to promote awareness and to generate support for global justice and the fight against impunity.
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Category Archives: Topics
Death Row and International Law
The Obama administration, UN officials, and foreign leaders are asking Texas Governor Rick Perry and/or the U.S. Supreme Court to stay today’s execution of a Mexican citizen on death row in Texas for a crime he committed in 1994. At issue is not his guilt or innocence, the legality of the death penalty, or whether he was given adequate due process guaranteed under the Texas Criminal Code or the U.S. Constitution. Rather, at issue is a treaty violation. When Texas authorities arrested Humberto Leal Garcia Jr., a Mexican national, they failed to inform him of his right to consular notification, thereby violating Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations of 1963, which the United States accepts as legally binding under international law.
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Rwanda Prime Minister Kambanda First Head of State to Plead Guilty to Genocide
On this day in 1994, Jean Kambanda became the Prime Minister of Rwanda. During the 100-day campaign, he incited genocide on the radio by announcing, “Genocide is justified in the fight against the enemy.” He became the first head of state to plead guilty to genocide since the adoption of the Genocide Convention and was sentenced to life imprisonment by the ad hoc International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). His sentence was upheld on appeal on October 19, 2000. He currently is in prison in Bamako Central Prison, Mali. In memory of those known and unknown who died . . .
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U.S. Nuclear Posture Review Calls for Bolstering International Law and Institutions
The Obama Administration yesterday released its Nuclear Posture Review Report (NPR), which establishes “U.S. nuclear policy, strategy, capabilities, and force posture for the next five years to ten years.” The 2010 NPR becomes the third official high-level review and the first one to be entirely declassified. The NPR’s key objectives emphasize prevention, no new nuclear weapons, no new nuclear testing, and strategic options for deterrence. For the first time, prevention is given top priority. One of the key elements of prevention, identified in the Review, is the strengthening of international law and its institutions to ensure nuclear security worldwide. The Review calls for bolstering the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as the centerpiece of the nuclear nonproliferation regime; pursuing ratification and early entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT); seeking negotiations on a verifiable Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT); and creating new frameworks for treaty enforcement and international nuclear energy cooperation.
The NPR states the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) must be given additional financial resources and stronger verification authority to deter and detect safeguards violations. The release of the NPR occurred two days before the signing of a new U.S.-Russia arms reduction treaty and six days before President Obama’s Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, D.C. on April 12-13, 2010, during which 43 heads of state will address the clandestine proliferation of nuclear material and nuclear material trafficking.
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Bassiouni “Quite Doubtful” International Criminal Court Will Succeed — The Failures, Challenges, and Future of International Criminal Law
After dedicating much of his career to the establishment of the International Criminal Court, M. Cherif Bassiouni — often called the “father” of international criminal law — startled an audience at an international law conference in Washington, D.C. on Thursday when he called some international criminal tribunals shams and declared others to be mired in bureaucratic failures. He asserted that there really is no political will by States to have an independent international criminal justice system. Experience has shown that States can create obstacles to justice and international accountability by intentionally underfunding some efforts, making access to data difficult, supporting tribunals premised on little more than window-dressing, and creating overly bureaucratic international criminal systems. He never blatantly said the ICC will dissolve, but he implied its current overly bureaucratic framework is leading to the Court’s irrelevancy. Whereas his quixotic dream has been to build an international criminal system to stop national politicians from determining who gets prosecuted, the hero of international criminal justice now implies that his vision is unachievable, at least within any foreseeable future. As such, Bassiouni predicts that there will be a transformation of international law and its institutions. “International criminal justice will take another turn,” he said. “And maybe it’s a turn for the best.” Specifically, we likely will see a shift from supranational criminal courts to national courts, which he said will be more successful in prosecuting the guilty. The challenge he put forth to the lawyers and soon-to-be international lawyers in the room is how to use international law both to connect the national courts and to provide for effective domestic prosecutions of international crimes.
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ASIL Keynote Highlight: U.S. Legal Adviser Harold Koh Asserts Drone Warfare Is Lawful Self-Defense Under International Law
Last night, U.S. State Department legal adviser Harold Koh outlined, for the first time, the Obama administration’s legal justifications under international law for the targeted killings of non-state actors using remotely piloted aircraft, often referred to as “drones.” He inserted the topic of drones into his keynote at the American Society of International Law 104th Annual Meeting at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington, D.C. The United States has used drones since at least 2001 to kill high-level terrorist operatives abroad, particularly in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. The Obama administration has significantly increased the number of targeted drone killings, according to various non-governmental organizations and media outlets. In this posting, I look at the specific legal reasoning and standards put forth by Koh, the reactions by international law experts, and a few unanswered questions under international law.
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14th Annual International Environmental Moot Court Competition
The 14th Annual International Environmental Moot Court Competition concluded yesterday with the Law Society of Ireland, Cork as Applicant facing the University of Maryland School of Law as Respondent. This year’s simulated case before the International Court of Justice focused on “Beaked Whales and Marine Seismic Surveys.” Student attorneys made arguments under the Espoo Convention, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the duty to prevent transboundary harm under customary international law. More than 80 teams competed worldwide with 19 teams advancing to the international finals in Florida. And the 2010 winner is . . .
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California Supreme Court Hears Death Penalty Appeals Based on International Law
Two weeks ago, the California Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a death penalty appeal. The defendant’s legal arguments included, in part, that the death sentence must be vacated because the death penalty violates international law and that international law is binding on the California state court. Specifically, the defendant contends that the California death penalty statute violates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and evolving global norms against capital punishment. The Court has not yet ruled on the case and will be hearing similar legal arguments in another death penalty appeal before the Court on November 4, 2009. Should international human rights instruments and customary international law influence the Court’s analysis of the death penalty statute, the defendant’s due process rights, and what constitutes “cruel and unusual” punishment?
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FTC Workshop: Panel on Emerging Business Models for Online Journalism and Intellectual Property Rights
Nearly five years after the Grokster case transformed the freewheeling world of free online music sharing into the fee-based business model of iTunes, newspapers are arguing for similar legal enforcement of their intellectual property rights online. The enemy is no longer peer-to-peer (P2P) software. Rather, the new alleged enemy is “news aggregators,” such as Google News. At last week’s FTC Workshop on Journalism and the Internet, a panel of nine industry experts addressed, “Emerging Business Models for Journalism.” The 9-person panel included two lawyers: Srinandan Kasi, General Counsel for the Associated Press and Steven Brill, a graduate of Yale Law School and co-founder of Journalism Online, Inc. Update: the archived webcast is now available.
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FTC Workshop on Journalism and the Internet: How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is hosting a two-day “Workshop on Journalism and the Internet” in Washington, D.C. The workshop serves as a forum for industry leaders, consumer advocates, academics, and lawyers to advise the FTC on possible changes to copyright law, antitrust law, and tax policy. The FTC convened the workshop in response to concerns that investigative journalism and coverage of public affairs news is on the decline due to financial difficulties by news agencies and new online competition from citizen journalists, bloggers, and aggregate content providers. The FTC asked workshop participants for proposals related to: (a) new tax treatments of news organizations, (b) changes in copyright, including the “fair use” doctrine as applied to news stories, (c) antitrust exemptions as applied to certain conduct of news organizations, and (d) greater public funding for public affairs news. The Workshop continues today and is open to the public. For those unable to attend, the Workshop is available as a live webcast.
