Presentation Batting Order

Presentations next week will be conducted in the following order:

Tuesday:
 1) Jared, 2) Jordan, 3) Nhu, 4) Aaron, 5) Matt, 6) Liz, 7) Christina, 8) India, 9) Marissa;

Thursday: 
10) Cate, 11) Megan, 12) Sara, 13) Jaci, 14) Kallie, 15) Denise.

UNFCCC - COP 18 in Doha

Further to our discussion this week of international environmental law, and in particular the UN Framework Convention for Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol, you should take a look at the proceedings of the 18th COP, which is under way this month in Doha.

Readings - Environmental Law

In preparation for our examination of international environmental law next week, you should read Chapter 18, Sections 1-3 (pp. 1486-1511).

Israeli Strikes in Gaza

As I am sure you must have already heard, Israel today launched intense air-strikes in Gaza, in which more than 10 people have so far been killed, including children. As part of the operation, Israel conducted a targeted killing of one of most senior officials of Hamas. The operations were said to be a response to a recent increase in rocket fire from Gaza into civilian populated areas of Southern Israel. Several hundred rockets were fired in the last week, causing several injuries to civilians. Egypt has recalled its ambassador from Israel and has called upon the Arab League to take action, and has also requested that the issue be taken up by the UN Security Council. There are fears that Israel is planning to mount a more sustained military operation as it did in Operation Cast Lead in 2009, in which more than 1,500 Palestinians were killed and significant portions of Gaza's infrastructure was destroyed.

How would you analyze the situation in terms of the doctrine of self-defense we studied over the last week? Does the rocket fire, much of it conducted by extremist groups operating in Gaza but not directly under the control of Hamas, constitute an armed attack against Israel, triggering the right of self-defense? If so, how would you analyze the necessity of the Israeli operations, and at what point would you suggest that the principle of proportionality is being violated? How would you measure that? Be sure to monitor events as they unfold with these questions in mind.

Goldsmith Testimony at the Iraq Inquiry on Anticipatory Self-Defense

Further to our discussion in class this week, please take a few minutes to watch the testimony of Lord Goldsmith before the Iraq Inquiry, the British public inquiry into the legality of the invasion of Iraq. I particularly would like you to listen to the testimony between minutes 14:00-17:30, which is his discussion of the difference between anticipatory and what he calls preemptive (i.e. preventative) self-defense. You may be interested to listen to far more than that.

You may be interested to read further on the other advice Goldsmith provided to the Prime Minister prior to the official Memo we have studied, in the form of notes in which Goldsmith indicated that he thought any invasion without a further resolution would be unlawful. More on the dispute here.

Definitions of Aggression

As we take up the question of the definition of aggression today, for those interested in reading more about the issue, there is a good article on the subject at EJIL: Talk! on the definition the purposes of the Rome Statute of the ICC, which was decided upon at the international conference at Kampala last year. As discussed in the blog post, the new definition and associated "understandings" raise many interesting issues involving treaty interpretation.

The Kampala definition itself is as follows:For the purpose of this Statute, “crime of aggression” means the planning, preparation, initiation or execution, by a person in a position effectively to exercise control over or to direct the political or military action of a State, of an act of aggression which, by its character, gravity and scale, constitutes a manifest violation of the Charter of the United Nations.

You may also want to look at the full text of UN General Assembly Resolutions 2626 (Declaration on Friendly Relations), and 3314 (Definition of Aggression), that were discussed in class and only excerpted in the text.

Final Readings on Use of Force

Continuing our examination of use of force in Chapter 15, you should focus your reading on the following sections:

Continuing in Section 1 (C),
(6)(a) Schachter piece, and notes;
    (b) the Schachter piece on preemptive use of force;
    (d) self-defense against non-state actors;
Section 2
Intro and (A);
(B) (focus on Schachter piece)
(C)
Section 3
(A) (this ties into the debate on Iraq)

In addition, for the debate on the invasion of Iraq next week, in addition to the discussion in the text, please review the Memo from the Attorney General of the U.K. on the subject, as well as U.N. Security Council Resolutions 678, 687, and 1441, all of which can be downloaded from the links here.

For those who may be interested in reading another ICJ decision that analyzes the issues of self-defense, a highlighted and redacted copy of the ICJ's judgment in the Oil Platforms Case (Iran v. U.S.A.), can be downloaded here. Should you want to put the redacted portion into context, remember that you can download summaries of the judgments at the ICJ website.

You may also want to look at the full text of UN General Assembly Resolutions 2626 (Declaration on Friendly Relations), and 3314 (Definition of Aggression), which we will discuss this week.

Recent Developments in the GWOT

Last week some a couple of interesting developments in the so-called "global war on terror". The first was the announcement on the Lawfare blog that the U.N. Special Rapporteur for Human Rights and Counter-terrorism had suggested that certain drone strikes in Pakistan may have constituted war crimes, and that he was commencing an special investigation within the procedures of the Human Rights Council.

A second development of interest, the U.K. Supreme Court handed down a decision last week in the case Secretary of State for Foreign and Commenwealth Affairs v. Rahmatullah, finding that the U.S. had violated international law in transporting a detainee from Iraq to Bagram in Afghanistan for indefinite detention. The Court explicitly held that the interpretation of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention by Jack Goldsmith, then the Director of the Office of Legal Council, in his OLC memo providing the rational for the transportation, was implausible and incorrect. The Opinio Juris post on the judgment provides and excerpt of the judgment on the interpretation issue - consider it in light of what you have learned about treaty interpretation.

Political Prisons in China

Christina Hansen writes:

I came across an NPR story this morning that seemed pertinent to our class discussion of human rights in International Law. China has "hundreds - at least hundreds" of black jails where critics of local government officials are secretly detained to quiet dissent. The Chinese government denies their existence, but in the story, a 42-year-old Chinese woman who has been detained more than 10 times leads the reporter directly to one of these sites.

Much like the exercise we worked on in Thursday's class, this story raises many human rights concerns in my mind. The red flags here include arbitrary arrest/detention, the silencing of dissent through fear and intimidation, and the lack of redress and/or remedies for citizens whose rights have been violated by the government.

Readings - Use of Force

Next week we will begin our examination of the Use of Force under International Law. On Tuesday we will begin by looking at the basic principles and their history, with a focus on the modern U.N. system, in preparation for which you should read from the beginning of Chapter 15 up to p.1166. Thursday we will take up the case of Nicaragua v. U.S.A., and consider issues relating to the doctrine of self-defense, for which you should read up to the end of Section 1, on p. 1192.

Derogation from Human Rights Obligations

In the Loveless case which we examine this week, 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 was quite deferential to the state's interests. In thinking about this, 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):

The Power of Compound Interest

Further to our discussion of damages and costs in litigation, and the difference between compound and simple interest, 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, than an account earning simple interest at the same rate over the same period.

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.