Over at Opinio Juris Kevin Heller outlines why he is advising the Karadzic defense team at the ICTY. The ethics of defense for war crimes and crimes against humanity can be tough to nut out, we are seeing a similar problem over in India trying to get representation for an accused Mumbai shooter. Heller lays out good reasoning behind working for those most people “know” are guilty.
Reading Charterblog can really lower your faith in the legislature and judiciary, but does give rise to some great quotes: Devine and Legg will no doubt see the non-application of the Charter as another instance of the conspiracy of Freemasons and the like out to protect the supposed pedophiles of Ordo Templi Orientis. Alas, as readers of this blog well know, the real explanation is much more mundane and much more disturbing: Victorian judges simply cannot read.
Seth Brau has put together this excellent animation to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for the Human Rights Action Center – a group trying to raise awareness of the UDHR.
They say less than 5% of people even know of the existence of the UDHR, the Human Rights Action Center is asking people to ask their governments to print the UDHR in every passport. It’s an interesting idea and one that would raise awareness of human rights generally.
Of the course the UDHR itself has little direct legal effect – though it can be useful when interpreting other human rights instruments – even under international law. Perhaps the next step will be to start promoting the ICCPR/ICESCR, which bind signatories?
