The Genocide in Myanmar Goes to Court

As we discussed briefly in class, there have been two new and significant developments regarding the likely adjudication of the genocide committed against the Muslim minority, the Rohingya people, in Myanmar. One is the application by The Gambia against Myanmar in the ICJ, about which there are a number of blog posts (see here for EJILTalk!; and Opinio Juris; and Just Security); and the second is the decision by the prosecutor of the ICC to commence investigations into the genocide (see this overview of all the developments in Opinio Juris). On Wednesday it was announced that the famous and now somewhat discredited leader of Myanmar, Ang San Suu Kyi, will lead the country's delegation to the ICJ.

For a good backgrounder on the causes and particulars of the genocide, see this piece from the Council on Foreign Relations.

The Scope of the Doctrine of Self-Defense

As we are about to dig into the doctrine of self-defense, you may find interesting this excellent blog post that was published this last week, exploring whether states may use force in response to armed attacks launched by non-state actors, in the absence of being able to attribute the attacks to the state from which the non-state actor was operating. We addressed this issue in the exercise we did in class on whether the US invasion of Afghanistan, in response to 9/11, had been lawful.

UN Committee Deliberates Universal Jurisdiction

This last week the 6th Committee of the UN, which is the committee that addresses legal issues, released a document reviewing the Committee's views on the scope and application of universal jurisdiction: https://undocs.org/A/C.6/74/L.6.

Discrimination and the Right to Equality

Further to our discussion of equality and unjust discrimination this week, here is a PBS Frontline episode about the Brown Eyes-Blue Eyes experiment that I mentioned (thanks to Ric for unearthing it!). Also, below is an excerpt of a TED Talk that I show to my Con Law II and Human Rights classes on equality - it illustrates the extent to which the sense of fairness, and the sense of injustice at being treated unequally, is deeply hardwired into not only humans, but also many animals. The excerpt is only 3 minutes long, but is a quite extraordinary illustration of the principle.

Threat to the Life of the Nation

We have previously talked in class about what constitutes an existential threat, or a threat to the life of the nation - considering, for instance, the question of whether the 9/11 attacks rose to the level of constituting such a threat. This week we will be returning to this question in the Loveless case, which was an early case considering the latitude for states to derogate from rights obligations during times of national emergency, when the life of the nation is threatened. The Court, in one of its very first judgments, was quite deferential to the state's interests. But in considering the question, and what the test should be, you might be interested in looking at how the House of Lords more recently considered the issue of derogation from rights due to threats to the life of the nation, in A(F.C.) v. the Home Secretary [2004].

The case (you can find the full judgment here) involved the "certification" of the applicants under the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act, 2001, which permitted the government to detain persons so certified for an indefinite period. The government of the U.K. argued that the law constituted a permitted derogation from its obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights.

As part of the decision, Lord Hoffman considered what "the life of the nation" meant in Art. 15 of the Convention, and wrote as follows (continued below the fold):

Simple vs. Compound Interest in Calculating Reparations

Further to our discussion in class last week, on the calculation of reparations , here is the post on simple versus compound interest:

Understanding the difference between simple and compound interest is profoundly important - not only for purposes of calculating damages or reparations, but for one's own personal life. Here is a link to a spreadsheet that illustrates the power of compound interest. It includes the formulas you can use to calculate straight-forward compound interest.

Important to note is that an investment of $15,000 in an account earning compound interest, calculated and paid monthly, at a rate of 6% per annum, will earn $31,653.07 more in interest over a 20 year period, than an account earning simple interest at the same rate over the same period. Or to put it another way, the compound interest on a debt (and the interest on most debt is compounded), will be significantly more over time than simple interest. The problem is that many people think of interest, and do rough calculations of interest, in terms of simple interest rather than compound interest - and thus the power of compound interest can cause a lot of pain to the unsuspecting debtor.

Compound interest is even more powerful when the principal is increasing with each period. So, if you took $2 each week (the amount you might be tempted to spend on lottery tickets), and invested it in an account earning 6% per annum compounded monthly (admittedly impossible to find in the current environment), at the end of 40 years your account (in which you would have only invested $4,160 over the 40 years) would be worth $15,953, or close to four times your investment. Make that $20 instead of $2, and the amounts become more interesting.

You can find a straight compound interest calculator here, and one which includes the addition of monthly contributions to principal  here.

UN TV - Human Rights Committee

Below is a broadcast from UN TV of a session of the United Nations Human Rights Committee, which is the institutional body that oversees the operation of the ICCPR, here deliberating on the text of a "General Comment." As we get started on Human Rights, and will examine the role of the Human Rights Committee, this should be of some interest.