The Constitutional Crisis in Iraq: What Can the Federal Supreme Court Do?

Contemplate the ongoing deadlock in Iraq following French historian Fernand Braudel's classification of two spans of time, two durées. One is the longue durée: how does the Federal Supreme Court (FSC), and the Iraqi judiciary in general, shape the rule of law for the Iraqi citizen, and for the body politic of Iraq at large? The other is immediate, and addresses the half-year-long constitutional crisis

Coddling Dictators is Annan's Bad Habit

Op-ed

'A conversation to be had' on war and law: Obama's Nobel speech

Even more than in the Cairo address, the Nobel speech will mark the Obama legacy. The subject is pithy, combining defense, foreign affairs and international law on the most difficult subject that human kind has ever addressed: war. Thanks to the entreaty of the Nobel committee, which forced the US president to articulate his vision of best use for the most powerful military machine in the world, one is now able to measure action against words

Beware of Sudan's Secessionist Demons

Democracy means sorting out problems together, not going ones own way in a separate state every time there is disagreement. Only a miracle can save Sudan from the demons of secession. The precedent set could be devastating for the Middle East and well beyond

Reconciliation in Iraq: Taking the Constitution Seriously

Reconciliation, which draws the necessary constitutional principles over which Iraqi parliamentarians are called on to vote, and the Iraqi citizens to endorse (or reject) in a national referendum, offers a far better way than any other type of reconciliation. An improved Iraqi constitution provides an institutionalized reconciliation of unprecedented legal portent in the region

Madhat al-Mahmood, Chief Justice of Iraq: Portrait of the Judge as Hero

Iraqi judges have offered to their country in the past five years a dedication unmatched elsewhere on the planet. Nothing short of heroism. At the heart of all the work, and the dedication, is the leadership of Mahmood. Iraqis know, by and large, about this dedication, and call upon the court for redress whenever they can. In due course, Iraqi politicians will follow suit

The Special Tribunal for Lebanon, the staring abyss and what must be done about it

The STL, the UN and Lebanon must all contribute to avert an explosive situation in the countr

On the Specificity of Middle Eastern Constitutionalism

Ren Maunier, a prolific French ethnologist and jurist (1887-1951), summed up in 1935 the radical transformation of Middle Eastern law since the nineteenth century. In a brief report entitled Outline of the Progress of Law in Muslim Land, he noted the centrality of law in the immense change affecting the societies of North Africa that he knew: Amongst the social changes which can take place, one should put first legal changes. In Islamic countries, there have been sometimes, over more than one hundred and fifty years already, a transformation of legislation, and a transformation of jurisdiction: new laws, new judges. This transformation (which was at times evolution, at times revolution) is an important occurrence, which can busy an investigator who is at once a jurist and a sociologist. Rara avis

Is Israel a Democracy? It's conditional

This is a serious discussion to be undertaken on a world level on the type of system that Israel is, as serious indeed as the legal investigation carried out in the mid-1960s on the legal nature of the apartheid regime in South Africa. In the early 1960s, Yale Law Journal published a long, two-part article by Elizabeth Landis entitled South African Apartheid legislation, part one, Fundamental structures, part two Extension, enforcement and perpetuation. It was no longer possible for white Afrikaners and their US supporters to argue that apartheid, a neutral term until then in world politics, was a tolerable system of discrimination

A Federal Israel-Palestine: Ending 100 Years of Civil War in the Holy Land?

What if we substitute a federal Israel-Palestine for the two-state solution deadlock