Search Results for: 2013-02-01

The ongoing conflict engulfing Israel and Palestine continues to raise significant issues of international law and policy. My earlier contribution focused on the jurisdiction and substantive law of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Here I address the ongoing litigation before the International Court of Justice (ICJ or Court). Because the crime of genocide can be [...]

READ MORE

The Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland (OAG) indicted former Syrian Vice President Rifaat al-Assad on Tuesday, referring him to the Federal Criminal Court for trial. The OAG accused al-Assad of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity while serving as commander of the defense brigades and commander of operations in the Syrian city of [...]

READ MORE

The Associated Press (AP) released an exclusive report Thursday revealing a secret US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) spying program that targeted top Venezuelan officials, including Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, despite the program’s potential illegality under international law. According to AP, the program, internally referred to as Operation Money Badger, has been ongoing since at least [...]

READ MORE

The current conflict engulfing Israel and Palestine raises significant issues of international law and policy. This is part one in an anticipated two-part series that will discuss some of the relevant legal questions before the International Criminal Court (ICC; Part I) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ; Part II).  With both courts located in [...]

READ MORE

Australia is the only Western democracy not to have a Human Rights Act in its legal system or constitution. Instead, Australia has a patchwork of rights, leaning on individual legislation, such as the Anti-Discrimination Act of 1977, implied rights, common law, and state-by-state legislation. As noted by the Australian Human Rights Commission,  “There are five [...]

READ MORE

Last month, Indonesia made headlines by passing a new criminal code known as the Rivisi Kitab Undang-undang Hukum Pidana (RKUHP). The code includes a number of controversial provisions, including outlawing acts such as defaming the president and expressing views antithetical to state ideology. However, the provision that has received the most attention is the criminalization [...]

READ MORE

The situation in Myanmar continues to deteriorate, with news received on July 25 that four activists have been executed. The executions are the first carried out in Myanmar for several decades. The government mouthpiece, the Global New Light of Myanmar, claimed that the activists’ crimes were “giving directions, making arrangements, committing conspiracies for brutal and [...]

READ MORE

Romanian Human Rights group Friday criticized Romania’s so-called LGBT+ “propaganda” bill and called on lawmakers to stop it in its tracks. The bill, which has been approved by the Senate and is to now be decided by Romania’s lower house, prohibits the use of materials in schools that “promote” being LGBT+. The bill has been [...]

READ MORE

In his epochal, controversial and highly polarizing essay, “The Social Responsibility of Business Is To Increase Its Profits,” published in the New York Times Magazine some 70 years ago, Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman argued against the social responsibility of businesses, and explicitly declared that “the business of business is business.” The shareholder value theory of the [...]

READ MORE