SIXTH SOUTH ASIAN PEOPLES SUMMIT DECLARATION 2007

 As a member of the drafting team, I am happy to upload a copy of this declaration.

Breaking: International Criminal Court issues arrest warrants for Russia's Shoigu, Gerasimov

The International Criminal Court (ICC) announced on June 25 that it has issued arrest warrants for Sergei Shoigu, secretary of Russia's Security Council, and Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian army, for war crimes against Ukraine.

Shoigu served as Russia's Defense Minister at the time of the alleged crimes. Shoigu was replaced in May by Andrei Belousov, a former economy minister with no previous military experience, after serving as defense minister since 2012.
Shoigu and Gerasimov are charged with the war crimes of "directing attacks at civilian objects," "causing excessive incidental harm to civilians or damage to civilian objects," and the "crime against humanity of inhumane acts."
The charges relate to Russian strikes on Ukraine's energy infrastructure between October 2022 and March 2023, the ICC said.
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Putin’s designs on a Baltic island are leading Sweden to prepare for war

Gotland has been a popular holiday destination for decades, but recently Swedish commander-in-chief, Mikael Bydén, claimed that Russian president Vladmir Putin "has his eyes" on the island. Concern was further ramped up, showing Gotland was just one part of Russia's ambitions in the Baltics, in the last few days when Russia published a document suggesting that it needed to reassess the maritime borders in the Gulf of Finland.

That draft decree by the Russian defence ministry, which has since been removed, proposed that Russia wanted to revise its borders with Finland and Kaliningrad (based on a resolution adopted by the Soviet Union's council of ministers in 1985) and expand its territorial waters.
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The legal profession in 2024: AI

Can you envision a time when clients in need of legal assistance can turn to AI, instead of lawyers, for help, at least in more routine private law matters like divorces or smaller lawsuits? Maybe the plaintiff's AI talks to the respondent's AI and to the judge's AI and the various AIs sort everything out without the humans needing to get too deeply involved. I'm half joking, but then again, did the horse and buggy manufacturers immediately understand the implications of the automobile?

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Leaked State Department Memo: Israeli Assurances 'Neither Credible Nor Reliable'

A newly leaked internal memo shows that officials at four U.S. State Department bureaus don't believe the Israeli government's assurances that it is using American weaponry in Gaza in compliance with international law, rejecting them as "neither credible nor reliable." 

The memo, first reported by Reuters on Saturday, is a joint submission from the State Department's bureaus of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor; 

Population, Refugees, and Migration; Global Criminal Justice; and International Organization Affairs.

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The Supreme Court's 'Immunity Club' And The Advent Of Fascist Jurisprudence

I just watched a full hour of some very, very smart legal eagles analyzing what it means that the Supreme Court has decided to hear Donald Trump's immunity appeal. Six experts were interviewed by Nicole Wallace on MSNBC. She's good. Every one of the experts was good. The whole show did an excellent job of running through all the permutations and combinations of what it could mean that the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments of the Trump appeal on April 22, and what that could mean in terms of when they might issue a decision, and what that would mean about when the case before Judge Tanya Chutkan might come to trial.
I don't care how you cut it, this is the terrifying result you get when you elect a raving fascist lunatic like Donald Trump and he gets the opportunity – aided and abetted by right wing puppets in the Senate and their right-wing corporate puppeteers – to appoint a gaggle of starry-eyed authoritarian moonies to the highest court in the land. It takes only four justices for the Supreme Court to agree to hear a case. We learned today that four of the justices who went through the authoritarian training camp run by the Federalist Society, which is backed by a small group of fascist billionaires, got together and decided to hear Trump's case, which makes the absurdly authoritarian claim that he, and he alone, is above the law.
Justice Clarence Thomas, whose wife participated in Trump's conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election, has been supported monetarily by one of the right-wing billionaires that funds the Federalist Society. Although the court didn't announce the names of the justices who voted to take the Trump case, it is a certainty that Thomas was one of them. The other three are no better, because all six of the Republican appointed justices attend Federalist Society private functions, they give speeches to Federalist Society gatherings, they hire clerks approved by the Federalist Society.
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Israel Is Terrified the World Court Will Decide It’s Committing Genocide

  Israel Is Terrified the World Court Will Decide It's Committing Genocide    
    
For nearly three months, Israel has enjoyed virtual impunity for its atrocious crimes against the Palestinian people. That changed on December 29 when South Africa, a state party to the Genocide Convention, filed an 84-page application in the International Court of Justice (ICJ, or World Court) alleging that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
South Africa's well-documented application alleges that "acts and omissions by Israel … are genocidal in character, as they are committed with the requisite specific intent … to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a part of the broader Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group" and that "the conduct of Israel — through its State organs, State agents, and other persons and entities acting on its instructions or under its direction, control or influence — in relation to Palestinians in Gaza, is in violation of its obligations under the Genocide Convention."
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Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America’s Ruling Class, Finally Dies

Henry Kissinger died on Wednesday at his home in Connecticut, his consulting firm said in a statement. The notorious war criminal was 100.
Measuring purely by confirmed kills, the worst mass murderer ever executed by the United States was the white-supremacist terrorist Timothy McVeigh. On April 19, 1995, McVeigh detonated a massive bomb at the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, including 19 children. The government killed McVeigh by lethal injection in June 2001. Whatever hesitation a state execution provokes, even over a man such as McVeigh — necessary questions about the legitimacy of killing even an unrepentant soldier of white supremacy — his death provided a measure of closure to the mother of one of his victims. "It's a period at the end of a sentence," said Kathleen Treanor, whose four-year-old McVeigh killed. 
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‘Truly a David and Goliath case’: Six young people take 32 countries to court in unprecedented case

The European Court of Human Rights will hear an "unprecedented" lawsuit on Wednesday, brought by six young people against 32 European countries accusing them of failing to tackle the human-caused climate crisis.
The claimants, between ages 11 and 24 and all from Portugal, will argue that they are on the frontlines of climate change and ask the court to force these countries to rapidly accelerate climate action.
It is the first climate case to be filed with the European Court of Human Rights and is the largest of a total of three climate lawsuits the court is hearing.
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India’s supreme court issues handbook against use of archaic terms for women

India's supreme court has issued a handbook for judges urging them to shun words like seductress, vamp, spinster and harlot when talking about women.

Archaic terms that disparage women and perpetuate gender stereotypes can still be routinely heard in Indian courts long after falling into disuse in other countries. It is not unusual for a wife to be described as chaste or ladylike, and sexual harassment is routinely trivialised as "Eve-teasing".

The supreme court said its Handbook on Combating Gender Stereotypes was aimed at ensuring that "legal reasoning and writing is free of harmful notions about women".

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Illinois Supreme Court upholds state’s ban on semi-automatic weapons

In a 4-3 decision Friday, the high court found that the Protect Our Communities Act does not violate the federal Constitution's guarantee of equal protection of the law nor the state constitution's bar on special legislation.
The court also decreed that state Rep. Dan Caulkins, a Decatur Republican, and like-minded gun-owners who brought the lawsuit had earlier waived their claims that the law infringes on the Second Amendment to own firearms and could not raise it before the Supreme Court.
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Israel does not have a right to self-defense for its occupation

As Israel was invading and bombing Jenin this week, AIPAC was pumping out a simple message: "Israel is right to protect its citizens from terrorism." Others echoed the same line, often including the false theory that Iran—which supports and backs Palestinian armed militant groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad—actually controls the Palestinian resistance, implying, ridiculously, that but for Iranian malfeasance, Palestinians wouldn't be fighting against Israel's occupation. 
Israel's message from its own leaders makes the same case, with slightly different language. Opposition leader Yair Lapid, for example, put it this way: ""Our children are being slaughtered, and Israel has every right on earth to defend itself, and we from the opposition support the Israeli defense forces and the Israeli government on this matter." Lapid made that statement in English, meaning it was the version of Israel's message that was meant for foreign audiences, particularly Americans.
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Harvard negotiator explains how to argue

Arguments are a necessary part of life, but they don't necessarily have to be fraught. Psychologist Dan Shapiro has identified three barriers to productive arguments: an us-versus-them identity, not showing appreciation, and a lack of affiliation. Breaking through these barriers requires us to be better listeners and to recategorize our sense of "us."

I hate arguments. I hate the way it feels when my blood pressure rises and the cortisol kicks in. I hate the frustration that comes from talking past one another or reaching an impasse on an important issue. I especially hate the awkward apologies I have to dole out the morning after — because I definitely shouldn't have said that, and yes, it was a cheap shot.

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Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, ending 50 years of federal abortion rights

The Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision on Friday overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that established the constitutional right to abortion in the U.S. in 1973.
The court's controversial but expected ruling gives individual states the power to set their own abortion laws without concern of running afoul of Roe, which for nearly half a century had permitted abortions during the first two trimesters of pregnancy.
Almost half the states are expected to outlaw or severely restrict abortion as a result of the Supreme Court's decision. Other states plan to maintain more liberal rules governing the termination of pregnancies.
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Britain has a decision to make: the rule of Boris Johnson – or the rule of law?

 Don't succumb to Johnson derangement syndrome, they tell us.
Stay calm. Keep a sense of proportion. Don't get carried away. As a matter of
self-care, that might be good advice for those at risk of bursting a blood
vessel in their rage at this government and its leader. But learning to shrug
off Boris Johnson's conduct carries risks of its own. It can mean missing, or
underreacting to, acts that merit furious opposition – such as when, before our
very eyes, the prime minister destroys the principle that sits at the very
foundation of a free society, a principle first codified in this country eight
centuries ago and without which a life free of fear is impossible. I'm talking
about the rule of law.
   
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Why Johnny Depp lost his libel case in the UK but won in the US

The outcome of the Johnny Depp defamation trial turned a bit of celebrity jurisprudence on its head — the long-standing conventional wisdom that it's easier for a VIP to prevail with a libel claim in the United Kingdom than in the United States.

The reason, according to legal experts, may simply boil down to the fact that Depp's action against his ex-wife Amber Heard in the UK — which he lost — happened to be decided by a judge, whereas his case in the United States was decided by a jury.

 "The answer is simple," said George Freeman, executive director of the Media Law Resource Center. "It was up to the jury."

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Prosecutorial immunity is un-American and immoral

 

Since the advent of forensic DNA technology in 1989, more than 3,000 people have been exonerated in the United States after being wrongfully convicted of an array of crimes as simple as drug possession to as serious as capital murder. Texas has the second most exonerations of any state, with more than 400. Some of these miscarriages of justice were detected and remedied quickly, but other innocent men and women languished in prison for decades before the injustices against them were uncovered.

Often, these false convictions result from the fact that the police and prosecutors conceal evidence of a defendant’s innocence. And because of an unholy trinity of legal doctrines, they seldom face repercussions. That should change.

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Why Law

 

 

  

Law is not the only way to try and control behavior. Psychological manipulation, brute force, and managerial direction are other alternatives. The complaints about law and lawyers are familiar. If you engage in legal processes, they can be slow, inefficient, complicated to navigate, expensive; and, in their process or in their outcomes, unjust. In the face of these complaints and the fact that we have alternatives to governance by law, why should rule by law shape some of the standards by which we evaluate the legitimacy of governments?

To be able to answer that question, we have to first understand what law is. The starting point for my response is a very simple and very thin understanding articulated by a scholar upon whose work I draw upon frequently: Lon Fuller. According to Fuller, law is “the enterprise of subjecting human conduct to the governance of rules.” A set of conditions need to be met in order for that to be possible. Rules have to take a certain form. We can’t govern our conduct on the basis of rules that are kept secret, so promulgation is needed. Neither can rules be contradictory, such that so we don’t know what to do, so rules must be consistent. Nor can rules tell me today what I needed to do yesterday, so rules must be prospective rather than retrospective.

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Emotional Intelligence in the Courtroom

In our society, the court system is quickly becoming a formative institution, performing functions previously relegated to home, family, religious institutions, and schools. Even the healing community is making its way into the court system with the advent of drug courts and other forms of therapeutic jurisprudence.  A judge’s leadership skills are critical in managing the changes in the system, the integrated relationships that develop as well as the impact on their own work. Those most successful will lead with their head and their heart. In Tahiti, there may not be a word for sadness. Nevertheless, the emotion is there with all the attendant signs and behaviors. What is missing is a language, a word that describes the feeling causing the behavior associated with sadness. This kind of literacy is important to develop here regarding emotional intelligence, awareness, and a language for communicating the connection between our cognitive brain and our affective brain, our mind, and our heart, and the result that kind of learning can have on our work and our lives.

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RESTORATIVE JUSTICE, THERAPEUTIC JURISPRUDENCE AND THE RISE OF EMOTIONALLY INTELLIGENT JUSTICE

 

Restorative justice and therapeutic jurisprudence highlight the importance of empowering parties, of actively involving them in dispute resolution processes, and of using processes that comprehensively address underlying issues.204 They also stress the value of helping parties manage emotions associated with their legal problems and the importance of professionals exercising emotional intelligence skills in their work. The values and processes they promote have significant implications for the functioning of courts, lawyers and the justice system in general. 

They challenge conventional thinking about courts, legal practice and the role of litigants and clients, while offering a richer and more professionally rewarding vision of their respective roles. However, they are not a panacea for the justice system’s problems. Restorative justice is not effective in all cases, and other values of the justice system may outweigh therapeutic values in particular cases.205 Nevertheless, there are good reasons for considering how therapeutic jurisprudence and restorative justice can be more extensively used in the justice system and how their values can be incorporated into legal education. In addition to providing knowledge of the law and its application and advocacy, legal education should provide the interpersonal, intrapersonal and problem-solving skills needed for a happy and successful professional life.

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