As Marko reported in the summer, the House of Lords (or to be more precise, the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords) has been replaced as the final court of appeal for the different legal systems that form the UK by a Supreme Court. The new Supreme Court took over the functions of the Law Lords on 1 October 2009. The Appellate Committee of the House of Lords, consisting of fully qualified and professional judges appointed to the House of Lords (one of the two chambers of the British Parliament), had been the final court of appeal in the UK since 1876. Prior to that date, the House of Lords (the legislative body) had served as the final court of appeal and before 1399, both Houses of Parliament  (the Lords and the Commons) heard petitions for judgments of lower courts to be reversed.

When compared with other countries, the position of the House of Lords (in its judicial capacity) was anomalous in that it failed to represent the principle of separation of powers. Though the Law Lords (or Lords of Appeal in Ordinary as they were formally designated) were professional judges, usually appointed from the lower courts, they were members of the House of Lords in its legislative capacity and could sit and vote in the legislative chamber. In practice, they rarely did so but on occasion they did. The Lord Chancellor was until 2005 head of the House of Lords in both its legislative and judicial capacities and was also a member of the cabinet! The Law Lords heard appeals in committee rooms in Parliament and judgments were delivered in the chamber of the House of Lords.

The new Supreme Court is the final court of appeal for England & Wales, for Northern Ireland and for civil cases arising from Scotland. It is composed of 12 Justices of the Supreme Court (a new term). All the existing law lords were automatically appointed to the Supreme Court though they no longer have the right to sit and vote in the House of Lords. In a move with symbolic significance, the Supreme Court has moved out of the  House of Lords and occupies a separate building on the opposite side of Parliament Square in Westminster, London.

The Supreme Court held its first hearings on October 5 with appeals on cases of great significance for international law. Its first cases deal with the legality of the UK domestic orders which implement Security Council Resolution 1267 (for media reports see here; for details on the Supreme Court site, see here and here). Under that resolution UN Member States are obliged to freeze the assets of persons designated by the relevant Sanctions Committee as being ‘associated with’ Al-Qaida and the Taliban. The Supreme Court held hearings last Monday (Oct 5) on those cases which Antonios recently commented on here on EJIL:Talk!  These are the cases of Hay v HM Treasury ([2009] EWHC 1167 (Admin)) (where unusually the appeal has gone straight from the High Court to the Supreme Court) and A, K, M, Q & G v HM Treasury [2008] EWCA Civ 1187. In both cases, persons subjected to the Al-Qaida and Taliban (United Nations Measures) Order 2006 (’AQO’) which implemented SC Resolution 1267 argue that the Order impermissibly deprives them of fundamental rights (principally the right of access to a Court) without the explicit permission of Parliament. Judgment in these cases is expected next month and we will have comment on them here on EJIL:Talk! Read the rest of this entry »

Antonios Tzanakopoulos, D.Phil. cand. (Oxford), LL.M. (NYU) (Athens), is Lecturer in Public International Law at the University of Glasgow. A relevant paper presented at the University of Vienna in September 2009 can be found here in draft form.

I. Introduction: the 1267 Regime and Domestic Courts

For quite some time now there has been significant discontent about the fundamental rights implications of Security Council sanctions, in particular individual sanctions under the regime established by Resolution 1267 (1999) and subsequent Resolutions (see eg this blog here and here). The 1267 regime obligates UN Member States to freeze the assets of persons designated by the relevant Sanctions Committee as being ‘associated with’ Al-Qaida and the Taliban. But those identified by the Committee have no recourse against their designation, and no other remedy except the possibility to petition the Committee for delisting. Decisions on such petitions are taken in camera and no justification is required (see the Committee’s Guidelines).

Since Security Council decisions are not directly enforceable in most municipal legal orders, Member States of the UN have had to transpose the relevant measures imposed by the Council. This was done through the adoption of domestic implementing acts, usually of administrative character, in order to comply with their obligations under Article 25 of the UN Charter. The fact however that sanctions were imposed ‘on the ground’, as it were, by domestic administrative decisions, combined with the lack of any other recourse, has led affected individuals to attack the domestic implementing measures in the courts of various Member States (see here for the Monitoring Team reports, detailing challenges in the Annex).

II. Domestic Courts Have Teeth

The ECJ, in a decision controversial in its reasoning, if not in its outcome, was the first  court to finally annul such ‘domestic’ implementing measures (in this case adopted on the EC level) acceding to the claim of two listed persons, Kadi and the Al Barakaat Foundation. That decision would have effectively forced the 27 Member States of the Community in breach of their international obligations under the Resolutions and Article 25 of the Charter. The ECJ, however, suspended the effect of the annulment for three months, by which time the Community had adopted new implementing measures.

Still, the ECJ may just have provided the impetus that other domestic courts needed in order to embark upon their own ‘decentralized resistance’ against Security Council sanctions under the 1267 regime. The CFI annulled the domestic implementing measures with respect to Othman, another listed person, without even granting the grace period that the ECJ provided for in Kadi. But most importantly, a month after Othman, on 10 July 2009, the Queen’s Bench of the English High Court quashed the Al-Qaida and Taliban (United Nations Measures) Order 2006 (‘AQO’) in Hay v HM Treasury ([2009] EWHC 1167 (Admin)). Read the rest of this entry »

Elizabeth Prochaska is a Barrister at Matrix Chambers, London. She has recently completed a period as Judicial Assistant to Baroness Hale and Lord Brown in the House of Lords.

Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen captured by US forces in Afghanistan at the age of 15 and imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay for 7 years, recently succeeded in convincing the Canadian Court of Appeal to order the Canadian government to request his immediate repatriation by the US  (Khadr v. Prime Minister of Canada 2009 FCA 246). This is no small achievement. Until the Court of Appeal’s judgment, no court – international or municipal – had recognised an obligation on a government to exercise diplomatic protection to safeguard nationals from ill-treatment at the hands of a foreign state.

 The doctrine of diplomatic protection under which the state asserts its right to make claims on behalf of nationals injured abroad is a promising remedy for the human rights abuse of aliens. Governments can engage in all manner of conduct (some of it traditionally diplomatic, some of it outright hostile) under the guise of the doctrine. But as this brief summary of the current status of diplomatic protection shows it has yet to reach its full potential in either international or municipal human rights law.

 In its report on the subject in 2006, the International Law Commission (ILC) proposed a Convention on Diplomatic Protection which would attempt to resolve the dislocation between the traditional understanding of diplomatic protection as a discretionary right of the state and contemporary human rights vested in individuals. However, the ILC did not adopt the recommendation of its Rapporteur, John Dugard, that the Convention require states to guarantee an individual right to diplomatic protection. Instead, Draft Article 19, entitled ‘Recommended Practice’, suggests that states should be encouraged to exercise diplomatic protection ‘especially when significant injury occurred’ to the national. Drafted in soft language, the Article does not purport to create any binding obligations on the state. Discussions in the Sixth Committee at the sixty-second session of the General Assembly 2007  raised the prospect of imposing a positive obligation on states to protect their nationals abroad, but diplomatic protection is not up for consideration by the Sixth Committee again until next year and it remains to be seen whether a Convention will ever be approved. For now at least, customary international law offers little comfort to those suffering human rights abuse abroad.

 In municipal law, the status of an individual right to protection, or a duty to protect, as the Canadian courts conceptualised it in Khadr, is equally uncertain. Read the rest of this entry »

In my previous post on this topic, I argued that the international reaction to the Honduran coup potentially augurs a shift in foundational norms governing the relationship between international and domestic legal authority.  I also hinted that I regard such a shift as ill-advised, and noted that some of those in the forefront of the reaction appear to have given little thought to the long-term implications.

As, Doug Cassel’s ASIL Insights analysis notes, “Ordinarily international law imposes its own, autonomous norms for the permissible conduct of a government.  Questions of domestic law – including constitutionality – are left to domestic authorities, both as a matter of their sovereign entitlements, and because they are presumed better able to interpret their own constitution.”  The two reasons that Cassel cites are distinct:  the latter is a matter of respect for a foreign pouvoir constitué, on the ground that standards of legal interpretation are themselves a matter of local law; the former is a matter of respect for a foreign pouvoir constituant, on the ground that where permanently effective, breaches of constitutional order (whether by insurrection or by an existing regime’s pattern of practice) beget their own legality.  For foreign courts, both of these are ordinarily rationales, not for a mere “margin of appreciation,” but for judicial abstention.

However, it is not unknown for international legal questions to turn on a finding about compliance with domestic law, such as where treaty provisions provide that exceptions to specified human rights must be, inter alia, “non-arbitrary” and delineated in domestic law.  In such circumstances, assessing a claim of  violation requires an independent basis for ascertaining the requirements of domestic law.   The criteria for establishing a violation might be relatively deferential, yielding to plausible claims of local expertise in interpreting local norms; interpretation of legal (including especially constitutional) norms depends on all manner of historical, ideological, political, linguistic, and jurisprudential idiosyncracies, and a high court’s authority to say what is lawful counts for much, even in the face of text apparently to the contrary.  Still, one cannot exclude a second-guessing of local judicial authorities on the merits, especially in cases where courts are suspected of participating in a sham. Read the rest of this entry »

I agree entirely with the first point that Professor Paust makes in his previous post , about the impossibility of imputing the non-state actor attacks to Pakistan due to incapacity. Certainly imputation doesn’t make sense on these facts as he outlines them. However, the second point he makes goes to the heart of my question.

Professor Paust asks, rhetorically, how attacking Al Qaeda in Yemen could be an attack on Yemen as such. But saying that selective targetings of non-state actors on the territory of another state is not an attack on that state ‘as such’ makes those last two words do an awful lot of work, work not everyone thinks they can do. Read the rest of this entry »

In a response to my previous post, Professor Timothy Waters, asks why it is that US attacks on non-State actors in Pakistan would not be acts of war against Pakistan. In this post, I attempt to answer that question. First, we can’t impute al Qaeda or Taliban attacks on our soldiers, which are continuous and well-known, to Pakistan merely because Pakistan is incapable of policing its territory.  Pakistan would have “state responsibility” (but not “imputation” or “attribution” [see Nicaragua v. U.S., 1986 I.C.J.]) – so Pakistan could be subject to sanctions not involving the use of armed force if Pakistan financed or even tolerated such attacks (according to the 1970 UN General Assembly Dec. Principles of  International Law, etc., and Nicaragua v. U.S., 1986 I.C.J.) unless Pakistan had effective control over al Qaeda or Taliban operations or later adopted them as its own (U.S. v. Iran, 1980 I.C.J.) – none of which has happened to my knowledge.  I suppose we agree on this.

Second, Professor Waters asks whether by merely using selective armed force in foreign state territory that is in response to ongoing armed attacks emanating from such territory engaged in or directed by non-state actors (triggering necessity as well as Article 51 self-defense) the U.S. has engaged in an armed attack on the state as such.  I understand from general patterns of practice and general patterns of opinio juris (obviously a few states and a few textwriters disagree) relevant to customary international law as well as a proper interpretation of Article 51 of the U.N. Charter that such selective responsive targetings are not an attack of the state as such and that such targetings do not trigger application of the laws of war applicable to an international armed conflict unless the non-state actor being targeted is a “belligerent” (under international law, triggering appllication of all of the customary laws of war vis a vis the armed conflict between the U.S. and such “belligerent” — perhaps still today, the Taliban [clearly the Taliban was at least a "belligerent" when the U.S. used armed force on Oct. 7, 2001 against the Taliban, and it had already been at least a "belligerent" during the war with the Northern Alliance before we went in]).  Read the rest of this entry »

Editors Note: We feature below a discussion between a group of leading United States academics on the US’s targeting of Taliban and Al Qaeda targets  in Pakistan. Each of the discussants is a  leading writer on international law, and on the use of force in particular.  We are delighted to post this discussion on EJIL:Talk! As usual, readers are invited to post their comments below.

The discussion kicks off with remarks by Professor Jordan J. Paust , Mike and Teresa Baker Center Professor at the University of Houston Law Center. His initial remarks were originally prepared in response to a request from the media for clarification regarding certain issues arising from US use of drones in Pakistan. The other discussants are Professor Mary Ellen O’Connell (Notre Dame Law School); Professor Leila Sadat (Washington University School of Law, St. Louis); Professor Tony D’Amato (Northwestern University School of Law); Professor Geoffrey Corn (South Texas College of Law); Professor Ken Anderson (American University, Washington College of Law); and Professor Timothy Waters (Indiana University at Bloomington).

Read the rest of this entry »

Dr. Laurent Pech is Jean Monnet Lecturer in EU Public Law at the National University of Ireland, Galway. He has recently been Emile Noel Fellow at New York University School of Law and a Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley’s EU Center of Excellence.

 As is well-known, EU Treaties, to enter into force, must be ratified by all EU Member States in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements. In Ireland, following a controversial and ambiguous 1987 judgment of the Irish Supreme Court, ratification of EU Treaties is understood as requiring amendment of the Constitution, which in turn requires a referendum (formally speaking, however, each new EU Treaty is submitted by the Government to the Attorney General to determine if a referendum is constitutionally required: see this study for further analysis).

 In June 2008, to the surprise of many, Irish voters refused to amend the national Constitution to allow for ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, signed in December 2007. The Irish No did not lead, however, to the abandon of the Treaty as most national governments continue to consider this latest updating of the EU “Constitution” indispensable in order to help the enlarged EU to function more efficiently and more democratically. To pave the way for Irish voters to be consulted again on the same text, the Heads of State and Government of the 27 Member States decided that Ireland would be given some “legal guarantees” and “assurances” on the main areas of concern to Irish voters as long as they were perfectly compatible with the Treaty and did not require, therefore, the ratification process to be re-opened. As a result of the EU leaders’ agreement on the substance and legal form of those guarantees last June (see Conclusions of the European Council meeting), the Irish government indicated that a second referendum will be held on Friday, 2 October.

Designed to respond to concerns raised by the Irish people, the “package” agreed by EU leaders consists of:

• An agreement that, provided the Treaty of Lisbon enters into force, a decision would be taken to the effect that the Commission shall continue to include one national of each Member State;
• A Decision on the concerns of the Irish people on the Treaty of Lisbon and an agreement to subsequently enshrine the substance of this Decision in a Protocol to be attached to the EU Treaties at the time of the conclusion of the next accession Treaty;
• A Solemn Declaration on Workers’ Rights, Social Policy and other issues;
• A unilateral Declaration by Ireland relating to defences issues to be associated with the Irish instrument of ratification of the Lisbon Treaty.

 The commitments and “set of arrangements” agreed by the European Council call for several remarks. Read the rest of this entry »

Who is the current President of Honduras?  Far from the stuff of quiz shows, this question bears on the very foundations of international law.  The international reaction to the June 28, 2009 ouster of President Manuel Zelaya, though superficially similar to earlier repudiations of coups, is in important respects unprecedented.  Its implications have a profundity that few international actors – least of all, President Zelaya’s strongest international political allies – seem to have considered.

A decade ago, I explored at length the question of Governmental Illegitimacy in International Law.  The title was initially intended as a provocation, since the legitimacy of governments had ordinarily not been considered a proper object of international law.  It had largely been taken as a given that a ruling apparatus exercising “effective control through internal processes” – whether or not formally “recognized” – would be acknowledged to have legal standing to assert rights, incur obligations, exercise powers, and confer immunities on behalf of the underlying sovereign entity that enjoyed membership in the international legal order.

Read the rest of this entry »

In my first post, I began to address concerns brought to mind by W. Bradley Wendel’s excellent review for Legal Ethics (12:1) of five books on the “torture memos” generated by the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). That post lamented the tendency of the discourse on the memos’ improprieties to focus on criminal law issues while neglecting non-penal international legal norms, which were violated much more systematically (and, I would argue, with much more egregious human consequences).

There is, however, a flip side to the observation that the legal structure and political culture of the United States do not place breaches of international legal obligation altogether beyond the scope of domestic legal authority or policy consideration. In retrospectively judging the conduct of the memos’ authors – the subject of the still-withheld report of the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, and of potential criminal investigations (in the U.S. and abroad) – one must apply standards in effect at the time and in the specific institutional setting of the activity, however much one may wish to reform those standards prospectively. And here, the case is likely to be closer than is generally imagined, and dependent on more fine-grained assessments than even most legal scholars have appreciated.

As Wendel has elsewhere acknowledged, much of the adverse reaction to the memos stems from revulsion toward very idea of a legalistic rendering of such a morally-charged subject matter. What so many observers find malodorous about the memos is that they seek at all to specify the threshold of criminal liability – especially, with respect to the penal statute implementing the Torture Convention, the line between torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. I have attended fora of legal scholars at which the memos have been condemned as embodying the evils of “positivism.” This charge is understandable, given that even the most rigorous and accurate analysis of this distinction is inevitably a disgusting spectacle. But such a charge can only hearten the memos’ authors and their defenders, since it places them comfortably on the traditionalist side of a perennial debate, and deflects attention from the memos’ distortions of positive law. Read the rest of this entry »