Featured articles by staff, students, guests, professors, and any posts that are not “daily news digest”
The U.S. Government has restricted activities with Iran since the U.S. Embassy was seized in Tehran in 1979. In 2012, the United States continued to ratchet up sanctions against Iran as part of a continued effort to curb the country’s nuclear activities and to further actions taken against Iran since 2006. By placing economic pressure … Read more
Picture a medieval town, 110 acres in size and populated entirely by 10 cattle ranchers. Each rancher lives on a 1 acre parcel of land that together surround a 100 acre open space used for grazing cattle. If the 100 acre open space is shared by all 10 ranchers in common, each herder has a … Read more
A friend at the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia shared with me this oath read to testifying witnesses. You’ve got to hand it to Cambodians. They take perjury seriously: Introductory Statement May all the guardian angels, forest guardians, and powerful sacred spirits of Preah Ang Dang Kae, Preah Ang Krapum Chouk, Prcah Ang … Read more
In 2007, a submersible named Mir descended over 4 km to the bottom of the Arctic Ocean and planted the Russian flag under the North Pole. The news broke all over the world and prompted fears of potential violent confrontations between arctic countries. Thus far, such fears have not been realized, but with Arctic … Read more
Earlier this summer, a US District Court issued sentences in a international maritime piracy case that involved four US victims. The defendant was not an actual pirate but a ransom negotiator for the piracy financiers. A Somali man who acted as a ransom negotiator for pirates who seized a yacht last year and killed four … Read more
In my previous post, I argued that the two pirate negotiators prosecuted by the United States – Mohammad Saaili Shibin and Ali Mohamed Ali – must have incited or intentionally facilitated piracy while on the high seas in order to have exposed themselves to prosecution by a court whose only basis for taking the case … Read more
After ten years, the International Criminal Court issued its first verdict on March 14th, finding Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga guilty of three child soldier related war crimes offenses: conscripting, enlisting, and using child soldiers. The trial phase of the case concluded this summer when the ICC sentence Lubanga to 14 years in July. The paltry … Read more
A United Nations peacekeeper serving in Sudan’s besieged Darfur region was killed, and another injured, in an attack on Sunday. The Bangladeshi peacekeeper, who was a member of Bangladesh’s Formed Police Unit, was fatally shot when an unidentified gang surrounded and fired at the staff in Nyala, the state capital of South Darfur, at the … Read more
The economic conditions in Somalia are such that there is no shortage of men willing to hijack a ship, risking their lives in hopes of earning of the equivalent of 20 years of income – $5,000 in Somalia – out of a single $1.5 million ransom. That basic reality is the driving force of modern … Read more
Academi LLC, the private security contractor formerly known as Blackwater, has agreed to pay a $7.5M fine as part of a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. government, according to an FBI press release. The company, which has earned billions of dollars in government security contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan, will pay the fine along … Read more
The Denver Journal of International Law & Policy is one of the oldest international law journals in the United States and is ranked internationally. It is managed and edited by students at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law.
