[This is en excerpt from an op-ed/short essay I’ve written on the AU action, which is available for publication…] African Union leaders met in an extraordinary summit in Adas Ababa last week to discuss their strained relations with the International Criminal Court (ICC), as it begins trying its first sitting head of state, President Uhuru […]
Archive | International Human Rights Law
Human Rights Watch Director Privately Slurs Israel
By Eugene Kontorovich on May 22, 2013 4:30 pm in International Human Rights Law, International Law, Israel, War on Terror
The credibility of NGOs like Human Rights Watch depends on their being above and apart from the conflicts they monitor – to not take sides. Human Rights Watch has been criticized by many, including its founder, for giving up all objectivity an adopting an anti-Israel campaign. Their grudge against Israel has been clear for a […]
France’s Kiobel
By Eugene Kontorovich on May 2, 2013 3:19 pm in Alien Tort Statute, Corporations and Corporate Law, Global Governance/World Government, International Human Rights Law, International Law, Israel, Supreme Court
I wrote yesterday about the French Court of Appeals decision holding that French train companies did not violate international law (and particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention) by building a light rail system in Jerusalem, including areas occupied by Jordan before 1967. The case, PLO v. Alstom, is a perfect foreign coda to the Supreme Court’s […]
Kiobel and Academic Fallability
By Eugene Kontorovich on April 17, 2013 12:54 pm in Alien Tort Statute, International Human Rights Law, International Law
Alongside the Health Care Act decision, Kiobel is an example of the professoriate failing to predict the issues that would be taken seriously by the Court both on substance and style. When the Second and Ninth Circuit began questioning “foreign cubed” suits a few years ago, the great majority of scholars dismissed such claims as […]
Prisoner Offshoring, or Gaolbalization
By Eugene Kontorovich on November 19, 2012 8:25 am in Constitutional Law, Criminal Procedure, Eighth Amendment, Global Governance/World Government, International Human Rights Law, International Law, Uncategorized
Belgium and the Netherlands have an interesting arrangement, an example of economics and incentives working clearly in the public law field. Belgium has more convicts than it can accomodate in its prisons. Neighboring Netherlands has the opposite problem: not enough prisoners. Several years ago, it was facing having to shutter some facilities. But then the […]
Former Yale Dean Harold Koh (Now Legal Adviser at the State Department) on Dealing with “Hate Speech” by “Applying … the Transnationalist Approach to Judicial Interpretation”
Related to my post about Prof. Peter Spiro’s views on how international law could be used to diminish the force of U.S. First Amendment protection, I thought I’d note again some thoughts that I noted in 2009 from Harold Koh, former dean of Yale Law School and now Legal Adviser at the State Department, in […]
Arms Trade Treaty conference ends without agreement
By David Kopel on July 27, 2012 5:47 pm in Genocide, Global Governance/World Government, Guns, International Human Rights Law, International Law
The weeks-long conference at the United Nations to produce an Arms Trade Treaty is ending without the creation of a treaty. None of the draft treaties which have circulated in the past several days came remotely close to finding consensus support. The impossibility of achieving consensus involved a wide variety of issues and nations, far […]
Weapons Laws of the Russian Federation
By David Kopel on June 12, 2012 4:05 pm in Guns, International Human Rights Law, Non-Firearms Arms, Registration, Right to carry, Russia, Uncategorized
For those of who have been waiting for an English translation of Russia’s arms statutes, your wait is over. Independence Institute intern Margot van Loon is the author of the new Issue Paper, Weapons Laws of the Russian Federation. Here is a synopsis: No permission or registration is needed to purchase and carry chemical defense […]
The Cross-Cutting Politics of the ATS and Universal Jurisdiction
By Eugene Kontorovich on April 6, 2012 11:45 am in Alien Tort Statute, Constitutional Law, International Human Rights Law, International Law
In discussions of Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Shell and the Alien Tort Statute, many commentators suggested if the Supreme Court limits corporate liability or extraterritoriality under the ATS, it would eviscerate the statute, and be bad for human rights. More generally, limiting the ATS is thought to serve broadly conservative interests. These points are only […]
Can Congress Mandate the Japanese to Buy Detroit Cars? – The Commerce Clause and Foreign Commerce
By Eugene Kontorovich on April 4, 2012 3:09 pm in Alien Tort Statute, Federalism, Health Care, Individual Mandate, International Human Rights Law, International Law, Supreme Court
One aspect of the ACA litigation that has not received due attention is the effect of the Court’s ruling on the scope Foreign Commerce Clause. An expansive, limitless definition of the scope of “Commerce” would presumably apply to Foreign Commerce as well. If there is no limiting principle for the former, it would be hard […]
Precedent-setting Dutch Civil Universal Juris. Case
By Eugene Kontorovich on March 28, 2012 11:38 am in Alien Tort Statute, International Human Rights Law, International Law, Uncategorized
One of the peculiarities of the Alien Tort Statute is its mix of cosmopolitan conceptions of justice with American exceptionalism. Under the ATS the U.S. has been the only nation in the world allowing for universal jurisdiction (“UJ”) in civil suits. So while enforcing international law has been the justification for these suits, it has […]
Kiobel (III): Universality as a Constitutional Question
By Eugene Kontorovich on March 27, 2012 9:00 am in Alien Tort Statute, Constitutional Law, International Human Rights Law, International Law, Uncategorized
Lets take a break from the ACA to think about the federal government’s power to to deal with matters that have no connection to the U.S., an issue the Court will take up when it hears the expanded arguments in Kiobel, the ATS case. Yesterday I talked about how the ATS extraterritoriality at issue in […]
Kiobel (II): Universality, Not More Extraterritoriality
By Eugene Kontorovich on March 26, 2012 9:32 am in Alien Tort Statute, Constitutional Law, International Human Rights Law, International Law
[Cross-posted on OpinioJuris] The new issue in Kiobel is not mere extraterritoriality, but rather universality. There are constitutional limits on universal jurisdiction (UJ); at most it can only be used for those “Piracies” and “Offenses” that have UJ status in international law. But Congress has not “defined” any offenses in the ATS. It delegated the […]
ObamaCare and the ATS: Can the Feds Regulate the Whole World?
By Eugene Kontorovich on March 26, 2012 8:35 am in Alien Tort Statute, Constitutional Law, Global Governance/World Government, International Human Rights Law, International Law
Today the Supreme Court takes on the scope of the Commerce Clause in the historic healthcare cases. The case raises the question of whether there are any substantive limits to the federal government’s domestic regulatory power. But another case soon to be (re)argued before the Court, Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Shell, manages to raise an […]
The Alien Tort Statute Returns to the Supreme Court: International Law versus Law of the Hegemon?
As I have occasionally noted here at VC, this term the Supreme Court will hear an Alien Tort Statute case, the Kiobel case, in which a primary question is whether the ATS embraces a theory of corporate liability. The Supreme Court presumably took the case because of a circuit split that has arisen over the […]