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A court in Norway this week is hearing an appeal by citizens who are suing the government over its decision to open up for oil exploration in the far north. Planet Rules speaks with University of Oslo law Professor Jørn Øyrehagen Sunde about Norway's climate action...
A court in Norway this week is hearing an appeal by citizens who are suing the government over its decision to open up for oil exploration in the far north. Planet Rules speaks with University of Oslo law Professor Beate Sjåfjell about background to the case and the...
A court in Norway this week is hearing an appeal by citizens who are suing the government over its decision to open up for oil exploration in the far north. Planet Rules speaks with University of Oslo law Professor Jørn Øyrehagen Sunde about Norway's climate action...
A court in Norway this week is hearing an appeal by citizens who are suing the government over its decision to open up for oil exploration in the far north. Planet Rules speaks with University of Oslo law Professor Beate Sjåfjell about background to the case and the...
The battle over who will dominate the Constitutional Commission is underway in Egypt. With a Presidential election being held at the same time, there is an atmosphere of chaos. Amal Wahab is the Cairo correspondent for the Norwegian daily Klassekampen, which published...
Iceland’s former prime minister is in court for things he didn’t do. To be precise, he is charged with four counts of not doing what he should have done, under the laws on ministerial responsibility. Herdis Sigurgrimsdottir explains. The case of former Prime Minister...
Today, the Supreme Court of the United States begins hearing arguments in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Shell, a landmark case in the struggle to hold business entities accountable for human rights harms committed abroad. The case involves allegations by members of the Ogoni...
Tunisia is moving towards a process of transitional justice launched under an Islamist-led government. Eileen Byrne sends this post from Tunis where tensions between Islamists, securalists, and stalwarts of the old regime are playing out across the justice and...
Judge Baltasar Garzón was convicted 9 February by Spain's Supreme Court and given an 11-year suspension. Four days later, a second set of charges were dissmissed. But Pia Navazo reports the conviction in effect ends Garzón's judicial career. The Spanish Supreme Court...
Today is the last of the three days for testimony before the Supreme Court in the case against Judge Baltasar Garzón. LoR Contributor Pia Navazo reports. The trial, one of three cases facing Judge Garzón, alleges the Judge abused his powers and violated Spain's 1977...
The Spanish Supreme Court this week rejected Judge Baltasar Garzóns request for dismissal of the private prosecution against him. As Pia Navazo reports, Judge Garzón is far from alone in his struggle to defend his attempt to investigate crimes of the Franco era. In a...
The short answer is "Yes. It could not be otherwise." But not in the way Julian Assange would like you to think. The media tends to report that the demand for extradition to Sweden arose after Wikileaks dropped a large load of diplomatic cables on 28 November 2010....
Judge Baltasar Garzón, famous for his attempt to prosecute Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, appeared before the Spanish Supreme Court on Tuesday. Garzón is facing charges brought by two right wing associations that he breached Spain’s 1977 Amnesty Law. LoR...
The Laws of Rule blog started before the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt...but only just. The Arab Spring has given LoR much to write about. No story has done more to propel questions of law - about constitutions, military trials, the role of the judiciary, victims,...
Update: Judge Garzón was convicted today 9 February 2012 in a ruling of Spain's Supreme Court in the Gurtel case described in this post. Judge Garzón is banned from the judiciary for 11 years and is still facing trials in two other cases. Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón...
Today's internet "strike" by Wikipedia, Mozilla, Craig's List and other sites (the list is long and growing) has raised global attention to the US bills now working their way through Congress, known as Protect-IP. Depending on where you sit, Protect-IP will either...
Later this month, the Quebec Court of Appeal should rule on whether or not a class action suit can proceed against Anvil Mining for alleged involvement in atrocities by the armed forces of the Democratic Repulic of Congo. Hugo Lagacé, an LL.M. student at the...
'Conflict Financing' is a periodic email bulletin from Professor Bruce Broomhall, Department of Law, Université du Québec à Montréal. The list supports those interested in conflict financing, natural resources and armed conflict, and related questions. Professor...
The deaths of protestors at the hands of Egypt's military have focused attention on US shipments of arms, including "less lethal" tear gas. From Cairo. Alix Dunn argues that so far business actions are speaking louder than diplomatic words. Successive speeches by US...
'Conflict Financing' is a periodic email bulletin from Professor Bruce Broomhall, Department of Law, University of Quebec at Montreal. The list supports those interested in conflict financing, natural resources and armed conflict, and related questions. Professor...
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-90LOx-3E0&sns=tw The tenacious anti-corruption organisation Sherpa marks anti-corruption day this year with a great (and short) video that shines a spotlight on going after ill-gotten gains (biens mal acquis). "This year, the...
Will the parliament Egyptians elect have power over the country's military rulers? Dr. Amr Shalakany, Associate Professor of Law at the American University in Cairo, spoke to Laws of Rule contributor Yasmine Gado about Egypt’s elections, military rule and aspects of...
On the heels of a report to the UN Human Rights Council detailing widespread human rights abuse in Syria, attention will no doubt return to the Security Council in New York. LoR Contributor Graham Usher reports that the so-called emerging powers on the Council have...
Norway may become the first country in the world to extradite a Genocide suspect to Rwanda after Norway's Supreme Court today rejected the appeal of suspect Charles Bandora. The 58 years old Rwandan man was arrested at Oslo's airport last summer. Bandora is wanted by...
ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo flies to Tripoli today, in the midst of a debate over where to try Saif al-Islam Gaddafi. Libyan Prime Minister Adurrahim al-Keib promised that the former heir apparent to Muammar Gaddafi would get a fair trial at home. Others,...
The diplomatic silence in New York is deafening. After conceding the defeat last week of their attempt to get the Security Council to grant Palestine full membership status at the United Nations, the Palestinian delegation is apparently...well, what are they doing?...
My grandfather fought. His father fought, as did his. They all survived their wars. As a boy, standing in silence next to my desk at school, I made an effort to remember them, to thank them for risking their lives so that my generation would not have to. As a...
Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act requires firms to conduct conflict minerals due diligence. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is in the process of formulating the rules that will implement this requirement...
As I explained earlier this week, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is in the process of formulating the rules that will implement Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act passed in 2010. Much rests on the SEC...
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) held consultations with industry and civil society last week on the conflict minerals provision (Section 1502) of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. At a public roundtable hosted by the...
Re-nationalization or the reversal of illegitimate privatizations? LoR Contributor Yasmine Gado reports from Cairo on the legal battles resulting from Mubarak-era liberalization policies. Several weeks ago on 21 September, Cairo’s Administrative Court issued a...
As the UN Security Council meets behind closed doors today to consider the Palestinian application for UN membership, Mouin Rabbani argues Palestinians should use the UN bid to internationalize attempts to resolve the conflict. On Israel-Palestine, President Obama’s...
The legal advisors of foreign ministries around the world months ago advised their political bosses that the Palestinian bid for membership at the United Nations is unproblematic. Legally. Palestine certainly meets the standard criteria for recognition as a state (see...
In Tahrir square today, people are taking to the streets to confront Egypt's criminalization of protest. LoR contributor Yasmine Gado writes from Cairo on the background to today's protests. On Saturday, 11 September Egypt’s interim ministerial cabinet announced its...
LoR contributor Graham Usher reports from the UN in New York that the Palestinian drive to upgrade its status at the UN this month has raised questions about the democratic basis for statehood. Later this month the Palestinian Authority may request to become a member...
The battle over conflict minerals in DR Congo is heating up. No, I don’t mean the actual fighting is getting worse or that your newly-purchased mobile phone just funded a war crime (although both may be true). I mean the debate over what to do about conflict minerals...
When pro-democracy protesters took to the streets in Egypt in January they targeted the army with a charm offensive. But, as LoR contributor Yasmine Gado reports from Cairo, the struggle over the constitution is exposing an alliance between the army and the Muslim...
Norway’s Prime Minister, Jens Stoltenberg, went on a walkabout today. Not much happened. In the wake of the 22 July killing of 77 people in a bomb blast and shooting rampage that targeted both Stoltenberg and his party’s youth wing, the fact that he’s not upped his...
LoR has been on holiday these past few weeks. Just as we were getting back to the keyboard our home city, Oslo, was attacked by what early indications make out to be a right-wing psychopath. More than 90 people have been murdered in a bomb blast and shooting rampage...
In June, member states at the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution endorsing Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights. This is an important step forward, the first time any UN body has endorsed a soft-law instrument on business responsibilities. As the...
The struggle over trade union legitimacy in Egypt is moving into the Courts. An Egyptian Administrative Court announced over the weekend that it will hear arguments on 14 June in a move to dissolve the Egyptian Trade Union Federation, the state-controlled trade union...
Businesses exist and operate at the discretion of the state, presumably under the rule of law. So, when a government tells a phone company to deny customers mobile service, or an internet service provider to pull the plug, or a software company to design a programme...
The significance of a glimpse of the enemy in war should not be underestimated. Nor should it be exaggerated. LoR's Mark Taylor reviewed Norwegian journalist Pål Refsdal's short film Taliban: Behind the Masks for DOX, the European documentary film magazine. For a...
ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo will need more than crime scene evidence to convince judges a case can be made against those most responsible for crimes in Libya's civil war. LoR contributor Graham Usher reports from New York. The chief prosecutor of the...
Most observers are predicting Canada's newly elected majority Conservative government to move quickly within its first 100 days to pass a package of tough-on-crime legislation. New sentencing laws, a crack-down on young offenders and organized drug crimes, even...
A court in Montreal has ruled admissible a landmark class action case alleging corporate complicity in harms committed by the military of the DRC in 2004. The claim alleges that Anvil Mining provided logistical support to the Congolese military in suppressing a group...
Update to the Update: the Orwell Prize was awarded to The Rule of Law by Tom Bingham. Update: Last night the Orwell Prize shortlisted the late Tom Bingham's book exploring "The Rule of Law". It is a real pity Lord Bingham is not here to enjoy the moment...and take the...
The Libyan conflict will not end soon. This has been obvious for weeks now. In part, this is a direct result of the US and NATO bombing campaign, which has leveled the battlefield between Qaddafi and opposition forces. This has saved lives. It has also led to a...
I am suspicious of theory, but I like Lawrence Lessig's "Code is Law". I started playing with it mostly because it was recommended to me by my favourite techy. But I really fell for it when I realised how well it manages to group complex phenomena into manageable...
Intervention has achieved its aims in Libya. LoR's Mark Taylor writing in Open Democracy yesterday calls for the launching of a political process in Libya in order to get people back on streets. The struggles in the Arab world aim to establish one simple principle:...
The authorization by Security Council of "all necessary measures" to protect civilians in Libya marks the beginning of the end of the Ghaddafi regime. But is it also the beginning of the end for democratic movement sweeping the Arab world? A popular uprising in Libya...
"We have now a non-international armed conflict, or what you would call civil war," Jakob Kellenberger, President of the ICRC, told a news conference today. The declaration follows last week's UN Security Council resolution, which called on Libya to adhere to...
"No one can attack civilians. That is a new threshold" ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told a new conference in The Hague today. "Countries can discuss how to organize themselves. That is a valid discussion. But as soon as someone commits a crime, then it is...
The Military Tribunals are locking up activists and the constitutional reform process is taking place under the watchful eyes of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. It would appear that the democracy movement has transformed Egyptian politics but not (yet) the...
Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi is facing trial for allegedly buying sex from an under-aged prostitute, French judges went on strike, and Spanish Judge Garzon is in temporary exile. Mads Frese of Denmark's Information daily newspaper reports on the politics of...
This week a judge in Ecuador handed Chevron an order to pay US$ 9.8 in connection with damages which indigenous peoples allege were caused by decades of oil pollution and environmental neglect. The company denies the allegations and although the decision is a landmark...
In a warning of things to come in Libya, Yemen and Bahrain, criminal trials against human rights defenders continue in Kyrgyzstan. Launched in the wake of last year's unrest which forced the president to flee, the trials have been plagued by widespread abuses by...
"We just don't have the legal tools" said Professor Yusif Qasim of the law faculty at the University of Cairo last week. He was speaking to a reporter about the possibility of recovering funds that may have been stolen from the Egyptian treasury and tucked away in a...
Within hours of Mubarak's departure from power, the Swiss authorities confirmed that they had issued instructions for Swiss banks to look for and freeze Mubarak's assets. The authorities indicated they have no idea how much may be squirreled away in Swiss accounts....
Egypt's revolution has established that sovereignty rests with the people. This simple yet momentous step has changed the face of politics in the Arab world. The implications are incalculable (for now) but everything depends on whether the movement can keep up the...
The following statement was published by the Liberty for Egypt blog and the Arab Studies Institute's Jadaliyya website. Also available via Jadaliyya is a the 6 February statement of the April 6 Movement which includes their basic demands. Statement from Cairo...
Former US President George Bush had to cancel his trip to Switzerland today after human rights lawyers in Geneva announced they would submit 2,500-page complaint against Bush to a Swiss court on Monday for alleged mistreatment of suspected militants at Guantanamo Bay....
Even as the new Egyptian Prime Minister, Ahmed Shafik, was apologizing to the country yesterday for the violence in and around Cairo's Tahrir Square, Egyptian and foreign journalists, lawyers and human rights activists were being rounded up and detained by the...
"We are listening to eye-witnesses, following all leads that can help us get to the killers whomever they may be, policemen, members of the former ruling party, militias formed by the former regime, or the former president and his entourage", lawyer Taher Yahya told...
With their black gowns and white cravats, Tunisia’s lawyers were perhaps unexpected allies of the teenagers who took to the streets in late December. But in the video clips shot on mobile phones that cropped up on Facebook and YouTube they were seen picketing...
Everyone's favourite bad-guy, Victor Bout, went on trial in New York this week, charged with attempting to sell arms to a listed terrorist organisation, namely Colombia's FARC. Bout has pleaded not guilty. Bout's lawyer's first line of defense is to challenge the...
Leading public interest law NGOs from the U.S. and Europe have petitioned a court in Spain to prosecute former Bush administration lawyers for their alleged role in justifying torture. A brief submitted last week to the Spanish central court by the Center for...
The London NGO Global Witness is proposing a new framework that could close legal loopholes which allow corporate crimes in conflict zones (full disclosure: I am an advisor to GW and helped draft the report). “There are far too many examples of companies which are...
Former Argentine dictator Jorge Videla, considered the architect of the 'dirty war' waged by the Argentina's military that resulted in thousands of people being killed or disappeared, was sentenced to life in prison Wednesday for the torture and murder of 31 prisoners...
The well-worn academic debates about accountability vs. peace moved into prime time this week as allegations by international bodies raised the prospect of heightened political conflict on three continents. The prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC),...
The media madness surrounding Wikileaks founder Julian Assange hit new peaks this week after his bail appearance in a London court. Temperatures rose when it was reported that Swedish authorities appealed the judge's decision to release Assange on bail. This later...
The Business and Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC) has released its latest update on cases involving a wide range of business-related human rights abuses before the courts in a number of countries. Cases profiled by BCCHR include: • "Anvil Mining (re Dem. Rep. of...
El Pais is the latest to ferret out a bit of diplomatic influence peddling from the diplomatic cables made public by Wikileaks. The Spanish daily has published the story of how the U.S. diplomat sought to influence the Spanish judiciary in order to stop proceedings in...
Parliament in London has published legislation that would require approval from the Director of Prosecutions before a judge could issues a warrant against an alleged war criminal. Predictably enough, the move comes in reaction to pressure from the Israeli government...
Things are heating up for Wikileaks after the most recent release of diplomatic cables. The uproar is far and away the most intense pressure the Wikileaks gang has come under. Weird when you think about it. Not only is Wikileaks comparable in status and function to...
The Defense is calling it "the most unfair trial international justice has ever seen" while the prosecution calls him a commander that was "one-hundred times more dangerous than any single racist." The trial of Jean-Pierre Bemba began hearing witnesses this week at...
The CBC's Neil MacDonald released a damning critique of the UN investigation into the 2005 assassination former Lebanese President Rafik Hariri. The short documentary "Getting Away with Murder" was broadcast this week on the CBC's flagship The National....
Infamous alleged trans-national bad-guy Victor Bout will have his first day in a New York court room 10 January 2011. Bout was extradited from Thailand to the U.S. in November 2010 to face charges of allegedly selling weapons to an organization on Bout Indictment...
The Allies put them on trial after WWII. The Israelis did it in the 1960s to one of the architects of the Holocaust, Eichman, after kidnapping him and shipping him to Jerusalem. The people and jurists of Argentina did it in the 1980s to leaders of the regime that...
The Open Society Justice Initiative and Leiden University, The Netherlands pulled off an interesting conference at the Peace Palace in The Hague in October. The event was held to mark the release of "Corporate War Crimes: Prosecuting the Crime of Pillage of Natural...
Any help with sources and resources welcome. Photo: Robin Taylor