Red Listed

"A quarter of the world’s mammal species is headed towards oblivion," reads the headline in today's Times of London. Occasion for this bleak news is the 2007 version of the Red List of threatened flora and fauna, published annually by the World Conservation Union, a Geneva-based network comprising 83 national governments, 110 government agencies, more than 800 NGOs, and 10,000 scientists and experts from 181 countries.
Sure enough, the statistics underlying the list reveal that, in the Union's words, 1/4 of all mammals, 1/8 of all birds, 1/3 of all amphibians, and 7/10 of all plants "are in jeopardy." Among those most threatened are gorillas, under siege by poachers and a lethal Ebola virus; crocodiles; and several varieties of corals. A dolphin species is suspected already to be extinct.
Julia Marton-Lefèvre (right), the Union's Director General, stated what ought to be obvious but bears repeating:

[E]fforts made so far to protect species are not enough. The rate of biodiversity loss is increasing and we need to act now to significantly reduce it and stave off this global extinction crisis. This can be done, but only with a concerted effort by all levels of society.

On September 13, ...

... 1993, the Oslo Accords on the Middle East were announced at the White House. A "Declaration of Principles on Palestinian self-government in Israeli-occupied Gaza and the West Bank" was signed by Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian Liberation Organization foreign policy aide Mahmoud Abbas. Onlookers included their superiors, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Chairman Yasir Arafat, as well as past and present U.S. Presidents. Despite initial successes, the Accords failed to achieve peace in the region.
... 1948, Maine voters elected Margaret Chase Smith (left), then a Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, to the Senate, where she served 24 years, following the death of the incumbent, her husband Clyde. She became the 1st woman to serve in both houses of Congress; her aims were higher, though, as indicated by this note from the website of the Margaret Chase Smith Library:

Senator Smith came to national attention on June 1, 1950, when she became the first member of the Senate to denounce the tactics used by colleague Joseph McCarthy in his anticommunist crusade. Following her "Declaration of Conscience" speech, some pundits speculated that she might be the vice-presidential candidate on the 1952 Republican ticket. The opportunity, however, never materialized. In 1964, Senator Smith pursued her own political ambitions, running in several Republican presidential primaries. She took her candidacy all the way to the Republican National Convention in San Francisco, where she became the first woman to have her name placed in nomination for the presidency by either of the two majority parties. In the final balloting, Smith refused to withdraw and so wound up coming in second to the Republican nominee, Senator Barry Goldwater.

Extraterritorial torture case moves forward

The 1st case brought under the U.S. statute that forbids extraterritorial torture moved a few steps closer to trial when Charles McArthur Emmanuel appeared in the Miami, Florida, courtroom of U.S. District Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga and entered a plea of not guilty to an amended indictment.
Unfamilar with the defendant, a 30-year-old "Boston-born U.S. citizen"? Perhaps his father's name will ring a bell: Emmanuel is the son of former Liberian President Charles Taylor, himself undergoing trial before the Special Court for Sierra Leone, sitting specially at The Hague. That trial, which has proceeded in fits and starts since the rocky opening session described here, is now in hiatus till January -- the same month that son Emmanuel's U.S. trial is now set to begin.
Emmanuel, said to have commanded his father's Anti-Terrorist Unit and sometimes called Chuckie Taylor or Charles Taylor, Jr., has been under arrest since he entered the United States in March 2006. By that act he satisfied the jurisdictional component of the relevant statute twice over; it applies to U.S. citizens and all present in the United States.
Returned last Thursday, the new indictment is gruesome. It adds to the original single charge of torture 4 additional counts, all pertaining to a period from 1999 to 2003. It contends that the defendant,

who headed an armed security force in his father's administration, allegedly committed torture by burning the victims with molten plastic, lit cigarettes, candle wax and an iron. He is accused of beating, stabbing and shocking them -- including in their genitals.

The five Liberian victims -- all in the United States -- have testified about their alleged violent experiences at the hands of Taylor and other Liberian security soldiers under his control.

Handling the 1st round of pretrial litigation was an all-woman prosecution team including Brenda Sue Thornton, now a Washington-based Justice Department lawyer, but not long ago an international prosecutor who served at the U.N. Transitional Administration in East Timor and who secured genocide convictions before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in the 1999 Kayishema and Ruzindana judgment. The Office of the Federal Public Defender represented Emmanuel.
This summer the prosecution won the 1st round: in a 14-page opinion that surveyed international law as well as U.S. foreign relations law chestnuts like Paquete Habana, Judge Altonaga (right) denied a motion calling for dismissal of the 1st indictment on the following grounds: absence of authority under Article I of the Constitution to enact the statute; absence of congressional "authority to apply criminal laws extraterritorially, where the locus of the offense is completely foreign"; sovereign immunity due a foreign official; unconstitutional vagueness in statutory terms; violation of due process on account of extraterritorial application of the law; and violation of certain 6th Amendment fair trial rights. United States v. Emmanuel, 2007 WL 2002452 (S.D. Fla. July 5, 2007).
Initiation of the 1st prosecution under this 13-year-old statute is to be welcomed. To be hoped for is full litigation of all issues in this case, important not only because of the status of the defendant and gravity of the charges, but also because it'll set the foundation of a jurisprudence for 18 U.S.C. § 2340A, enacted in furtherance of obligations the United States incurred by its ratification of the Convention Against Torture.

On September 12 ...

... 2003, the U.N. Security Council, by Resolution 1506, lifted sanctions imposed against Libya in the wake of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which crashed at Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people in the aircraft and on the ground.
... 1966, Florence Ellinwood Allen, the 1st woman to become a federal judge with life tenure pursuant to Article III of the U.S. Constitution, died in Cleveland, Ohio, her home for most of her life, though she'd been born 82 years earlier in Salt Lake City, Utah. In Ohio in 1922, Allen (left) became the 1st woman to be elected a Justice of a state supreme court. When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit 12 years later, becoming the federal appellate courts' 1st female Chief Judge in 1958. According to her court biography,

Judge Allen, who never married, had little interest in women's traditional pursuits. She commented frequently on the problems women faced in seeking acceptance by men. She stressed the necessity of working steadily and conscientiously. She also recommended a sense of humor, tact, and above all a lack of emotion. Judge Allen loved reading, especially poetry, and she retained her interest in music throughout her life, playing the piano with professional competence. She was a lover of nature and enjoyed early morning walks with her dogs in the woods and mountains.

The year before her death, Allen published her autobiography, To Do Justly. She left her house to her "long-time live-in companion Mary Pierce."
(Thanks to Legal History Blog for the head's up on Allen and on Barbara Babcock's Women's Legal History Website.)

No applause for "a bad joke"

"It's a bad joke," International Criminal Court Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said. Got that right:
The subject of his complaint is the fact that Sudan's nominated its minister of humanitarian affairs to head a commission charged with investigating human rights violations in Darfur. Problem is that, as posted here, that minister, Ahmad Muhammad Harun, is sought by the ICC, having been named as a suspect in atrocities that occurred in Darfur in 2003 and 2004. Le Monde notes that the nomination occurred

just before U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon's visit last Thursday to Sudan. The move increased unease among observers, who noted that in giving priority in July to the deployment of a "hybrid force" to Darfur (UNAMID/MINAUD), the Security Council has relegated to secondary status implementation of the ICC arrest warrants, one of which is aimed at Harun.

Moreno-Ocampo's right to object to this rebuff, of course. Yet it's worth noting that Sudan's gambit has resonance outside the context of Darfur -- Sudan is by no means the only state in history to seek to pack an inquiry panel with persons sympathetic to its viewpoint, if not with persons perhaps responsible for the events that triggered the inquiry in the 1st place. One's reminded of the Widgery Report that exonerated British troops after Bloody Sunday in 1972 left 14 civil rights marchers dead. (See Christine Bell, Dealing With the Past in Northern Ireland, 26 Fordham International Law Journal 1095 (2003); Angela Hegarty, The Government of Memory: Public Inquiries and the Limits of Justice in Northern Ireland, 26 Fordham International Law Journal 1148 (2003)). More recently, there's been a host of post-9/11 inquiry panels said to operate independently of executive pressure notwithstanding that some were appointed by, and some staffed by employees of, the U.S. Defense Department.
These examples suggest that attention's due to developing standards for the promotion of independence and impartiality not only in international criminal trials (a subject on which I've written here and here), but also in commissions established to examine tragedies that have provoked international concern.

'Nuff said

(Occasional item taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes.)
Many women, Los Angeles comptroller Laura Chick told San Francisco Chronicle reporter Carla Marinucci last week, are

tired of hearing about women's issues -- because I believe our issues are human issues, universal issues. Half of the kids we bear are boys. Women's issues are everybody's issues.

On September 11, ...

... 1857 (150 years ago today), more than 100 children, women, and men, emigrants in a wagon train headed from Arkansas to California, were killed when they made camp in Utah. As the Archeological Institute of America writes of this Mountain Meadows Massacre, "Who attacked the group is an ongoing debate, but historical accounts tell of a combined force of local Mormon militia and Paiute Indians. Executed in 1877, Mormon Bishop John D. Lee was the only person punished for the crime." The story is told as well at this LDS site, and is the subject of a just-released film, "September Dawn." The cairn above marks a mass grave.
... 1973, Chilean President Salvador Allende died in a coup d'état led by his military chief, Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Allende, as the BBC reported, was "the world's first democratically-elected Marxist head of state" -- a status that made him a target for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, said to have "backed" the military "uprising."
... 2001, hijackers used U.S. civilian airliners as tools of terrorism. The World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington each were hit, killing thousands; a 3d jet crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. The September 11 attacks touched off a campaign that U.S. officials dubbed GWOT, the global war on terror. The attacks were attributed to the Al Qaeda network, whose leader, Osama bin Laden, remains at large to this day.

The long(er) war

In the last year or so the Pentagon's taken to calling Iraq, Afghanistan, and the United States' post-September 11 campaign against terrorism "the long war" -- a conflict for which its strategists have mapped out 20 more years of activities. An event last week served as a reminder that the United States is engaged in another, longer war, halted by 1953 ceasefire pact but never ended via peace treaty.
It is, of course, the Korean War. As detailed on a Defense Department website devoted to the war's 50th anniversary (itself half a decade old), the conflict began when troops from North Korea crossed a partition line, drawn in the wake of World War II, on June 25, 1950. The conflict halted 3 years and 1 month later, when "[t]he United States, North Korea and China sign an armistice, which ends the war but fails to bring about a permanent peace." (The U.S. site is disturbingly silent on the fact that troops aided South Korea under the flag of the United Nations pursuant to U.N. Security Council Resolution 84 (July 7, 1950)).
South Korea's President Roh Moo-hyun now wishes to bring this chapter of history to an end, in the hope that a peace accord would smooth the way for better relations with North Korea. In what was called a "very warm" closed session during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Sydney, Australia, U.S. President George W. Bush refused to support that goal absent concessions from North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-Il. In a public retort that drew Bush's evident dismay (see video), Roh went off-script at a press conference:

PRESIDENT ROH: I think I might be wrong -- I think I did not hear President Bush mention the -- a declaration to end the Korean War just now. Did you say so, President Bush?
PRESIDENT BUSH: I said it's up to Kim Jong Il as to whether or not we're able to sign a peace treaty to end the Korean War. He's got to get rid of his weapons in a verifiable fashion. And we're making progress toward that goal. It's up to him.
PRESIDENT ROH: I believe that they are the same thing, Mr. President. If you could be a little bit clearer in your message, I think --
PRESIDENT BUSH: I can't make it any more clear, Mr. President. We look forward to the day when we can end the Korean War. That will end -- will happen when Kim Jong-il verifiably gets rid of his weapons programs and his weapons. Thank you, sir.

And so, for a brief but widely televised moment, does a small power level the field on which it plays with the large.

30 years sans guillotine

Amazingly, the 30-year anniversary of the last execution in France has gone unnoticed on Le Monde's website this morning, but is mentioned at Jurist. Hamida Djandoubi, a Tunisian immigrant convicted of murder was, on Sept. 10, 1977, the last person to be guillotined (note that guillotine is one of the rare French nouns that can also be used as a verb, though I've only heard it used in the past tense, guillotiné). The photo at right is of the last public execution in France (1939). The death penalty was abolished in France in 1981.

On September 10, ...

... 1886, the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works was adopted in Switzerland. It rests on 3 baseline principles: 1st, national treatment, by which works originating in any member state must be given the same protection in every other member state as the latter gives the works of its own nationals; 2d, automatic protection; and 3d, independence of protection. With 163 states parties, today this copyright convention is 1 of 24 treaties administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a specialized agency of the United Nations.
... 1949, U.S. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Ohio) was born in Cleveland, Ohio.

Sobrevivientes de Guatemala

If you’re under 17, don’t read this post! More murder, following rape and torture, of women, the primary victims of violence in Guatemala. As I posted here, organized crime, drugs, and other excuses for turf wars make Guatemala a place of daily terror, particularly for women. 565 killed in 2006; 2007 registers 322 assassinations already. According to Norma Cruz (at right), director of La Fundación Sobrevivientes (female survivors of Guatemala), organized crime is responsible for 30% of these murders. Hiding out in a safe house where the only open space is a terrace fenced in with aluminum siding and covered with barbed wire that’s electrified at night, typical victims include a 14-year-old who witnessed the murder of her brother and boyfriend and a 43-year-old grandmother of 4 who organized her neighbors in a poor village to buy pipes and a pump rather than buy water from a quasi-racketeer. After housing members of the Spanish NGO that’s helping with the project, Paula received a call threatening the murder of her family members, one by one, if she didn’t pay up, thinking her Spanish visitors had given her money. The caller told her not to bother notifying the police, of which there are only 6 per 90,000 inhabitants, because they’d already been bought. So her entire extended family fled, and she’s holed up at Sobrevivientes. Similar extortion attempts and death threats have people fleeing the country in numbers equivalent to those during the civil war (1960-1996), which killed 200,000 people. Meanwhile, in this country of ethnic and socio-economic inequality, 1992-Nobel-Peace-Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú is still campaigning in Maya country (elections are today), despite the murder of 7 supporters during the campaign and being credited with only 5% of intended votes.

On September 9, ...

... 1543, at Stirling Castle, 9-month-old Mary Stuart was crowned Mary Queen of Scots. She'd become Scotland's queen, and Britain's youngest-ever monarch, when her father, James V, died 6 days after her birth. Mary's uncle was regent during her childhood. A Catholic, she was a lifelong rival of her Protestant cousin, Elizabeth I, Queen of England from 1588 to 1603. In 1587, following conviction for treason, Mary (left) was beheaded at Fotheringay Castle in England.
... 2007 (today), the U.S. Grandparents' Day happens to fall on the same day that, in 1955, Seeburg Co. introduced the 1st jukebox able to handle at 1 time 100 extended-play disks -- that's EPs, not CDs. Unrelated events to many, but not here: 1 of my grandmothers, Amelia Mary Mottes Bruni, devoted her worklife to soldering parts onto jukeboxes at Seeburg's Chicago factory. The other, Sarah Jane McGovern Amann, was a Ma Bell telephone operator in Libertyville, the Chicago suburb once recognized as the home of 2-time Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson. Heartfelt thoughts of both on this day.

NC-17-Rated Grrls . . .

Taking a cue from Kevin Heller at Opinio Juris, I "rated" the adult content of our blog on Mingle2, a website that assesses the appropriateness of language and awards movie-style ratings to blogs. We received the same rating as Opinio Juris -- NC-17 -- but for different reasons. IntLawGrrls was deemed adult content for mentioning abortion nine times and rape once (as well as torture, bomb, and dick -- apologies to Dick Durbin and Dick Marty). Opinio Juris, on the other hand, received its rating for the blog's use of the words death, kill, and gun (in addition to torture). Leaving aside the idea that the word "abortion" is inappropriate for anyone under the age of seventeen, I found the difference in content leading to these ratings fascinating. . . What about you?

For human rights doctoral students

Summer saw the launch of another new blog, PhD studies in human rights, now the latest addition to our list of "connections." It's run by our colleague, William A. Schabas, Director of the Irish Centre for Human Rights and Professor of Human Rights Law at the National University Ireland, Galway, now visiting at Cardozo Law School. Provided are head's ups on recent developments of note in the human rights world. Recent posts've covered a range of human rights matters, from commentary on Bosnia v. Serbia, the February 2007 decision of the International Court of Justice (see IntLawGrrls' takes here, here, and here), to an amicus brief from Dick Marty (strike 3 in the above blograting) to the U.S. Supreme Court, to Bill's recent human-rights-lecturing gig at the Venice Film Festival. (Jealous? You bet.)

Heartfelt welcome.

On September 8, ...

... 2007 (today), by U.N. General Assembly resolution, the world marks International Literacy Day. An estimated 4 billion children, men, and women can read and write, and the U.N.'s Millennium Development Goal #2 is to make that achievement universal. Curl up with a good book -- maybe 1 from IntLawGrrls' Read On! series -- and enjoy.
... 1954, in Manila, diplomats from Australia, Britain, France, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, and the United States concluded both a Pacific Charter and a Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty designed to "maintain peace and security" by means of a Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, known as SEATO, which would remain in existence until 1967.

South-South Remittances

Today's NY Times features a story about migration, remittances, and their impact on the Indian state of Kerala -- splitting up families so they can afford telephones, refrigerators, and cars. The article discusses the high incidence of migration to the United Arab Emirates (where my cousin and her Keralite husband live), but doesn't discuss a major finding of a recent World Bank report -- that 50% of South Asian immigrants migrate to the global South rather than to high-income countries. Moreover, nearly half of all immigrants from the developing world live in other developing countries, and 9 to 30% (depending on the measure of financial flows used) of remittances come from the developing world. Notably, the World Bank study finds that the cost of South-South remittances are even higher than the exorbitant fees (averaging 13% and often as high as 20%) charged in the global North. Given that "[r]emittances are now are second only to foreign direct investment (around $133 billion) as a source of external finance for developing countries," the international community needs to prioritize ensuring that these remittances flow smoothly and are subject to reasonable fees in the developing world as well as the developed world. Of course, the challenges are legion -- many of the money transfer mechanisms are informal, making them not only difficult to regulate but also subject to abuse by money launderers and terrorist organizations. And critics have noted that over-regulation might clam up informal remittance flows or send them further underground. It seems that the best solution is to increase access to and desirability of formal networks in host and recipient countries, by providing migrants with legal status and necessary documentation and ensuring not only low fees but also efficiency, reliability, and convenience.

On September 7, ...

... 1965, Patricia Roberts Harris (depicted on postage stamp at left) presented her credentials to become U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg, President Lyndon B. Johnson having appointed her to the post on June 4. The 1st African-American woman to serve as an Ambassador, she held the post for 2 years. This was but 1 of many "1sts" among the achievements of Harris, a Chicago area native and law graduate of George Washington University. Others included 1st woman Dean of Howard University’s School of Law (1969); 1st African-American woman in the U.S. Cabinet (serving as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development 1977-79 and Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare 1979-81); and 1st 1971 African-American woman to director of a major U.S. corporation (IBM, 1971). She died from breast cancer in 1985.
... 1927 (80 years ago today), Madam Justice Claire L’Heureux-Dubé (left), who served from 1987 to 2002 as the 2d woman member of Canada’s Supreme Court, was born in Québec. On the same day in 1943, another member of that Court was born in Pincher Creek, Alberta: the Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, P.C. (above right), today the Chief Justice of Canada.

Women at Nuremberg: Witnesses

(Part 4 of IntLawGrrls' Women at Nuremberg series)

A characteristic of modern warfare is its catastrophic consequences for noncombatants; in particular, for women and children. World War II was emblematic of this phenomenon. It's little surprise, then, that the record made during proceedings at which "the entire ideology and bureaucratic reach of the Nazi regime were put to light," as Peter Heigl writes in his book Nürnberger Prozesse - Nuremberg Trials, included testimony from a number of women.

Women's testimony had particular significance at 2 of the later trials.

Doctors' Trial

In what has come to be known as the "Doctors' Trial," the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg adjudicated charges against 23 German physicians alleged to have taken part in the Nazi program to euthanize mentally ill, mentally retarded, and physically disabled persons, or to have performed nonconsensual experiments on concentration camp inmates. Among the latter were Polish women who survived the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Northern Germany. Three -- Maria Kusmierczuk, Wladislawa Karolewska, and Jadwiga Dzido -- are shown above left talking with a nurse about their ordeal. Dzido was a Polish Catholic who'd studied pharmacology before the war (above right). At the December 22, 1946, trial session at left, Dzido stood mute as Dr. Leo Alexander, a Boston psychiatrist and neurologist, pointed to scars on her leg and testified about her mistreatment.

Based on the testimony of Dzido and 84 others, as well as 1,500 documents, the Doctors' Trial ended with the conviction of 16 defendants and the execution of 7. (photos courtesy of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum archives)

Justice Trial

There was also the 3d proceeding, United States v. Alstoetter, known as the Justice Trial. Witnesses included Anna M., whom Heigl describes as "one of countless women subjected to forced sterilization." (Forced sterilization arises, with regard to a male victim, in "Judgment at Nuremberg," the 1961 film based on that trial. In it a defense attorney throws a tu quoque jab at the Allied judges by quoting Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' infamous 1927 condonation of a forced sterilization in the United States on the ground that "Three generations of imbeciles are enough.")

Of the 14 defendants who faced verdict in Alstoetter, 10 were convicted; 4 of them received life sentences and the other 6, from 5 to 10 years' imprisonment.

Still to come in IntLawGrrls' Women at Nuremberg series: Defendants. Already posted: Prosecutors, Staffers, Press.

On September 6, ...

...1974, in Zambia, leaders of Portugal and of the liberation front known as FRELIMO signed a treaty known as the Lusaka Agreement establishing Mozambique as an independent nation-state, and so ending more than 400 years of Portuguese colonial rule. This week Forbes magazine named Mozambican Prime Minister Luisa Diogo the 89th most powerful woman in the world.
... 1860, Jane Addams was born in Cedarville, Illinois, the 8th of 9 children in a family "with Quaker roots" who counted among its friends President Abraham Lincoln, who'd served in the Illinois Senate with Addams' father. "Lincoln's creed of the equality of men became Miss Addams's ideal as a child," the New York Times wrote on the occasion of her death in 1935. It must be supposed that a contemporary reporter would insert "and women" after "men," given this passage from her 1931 Nobel Peace Prize biography:

Jane Addams was an ardent feminist by philosophy. In those days before women's suffrage she believed that women should make their voices heard in legislation and therefore should have the right to vote, but more comprehensively, she thought that women should generate aspirations and search out opportunities to realize them.

The opportunity that she seized was founding of Hull-House, a "settlement house" where Chicago's poor were given access to health care, job leads, education, exercise, and the arts. Over time Addams became active in civic and pacifist movements at home and abroad. She spoke at the 1913 ceremony opening the Peace Palace at The Hague, for instance, and served as President of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom established there 2 years later. Because of her opposition to World War I, the Daughters of the American Revolution expelled Addams from its ranks. Addams' memoir Twenty Years at Hull-House (1910) is an inspiration. (photo of Addams, holding a peace banner at right, with a flag-holding woman believed to be Mary McDowell, courtesy of Library of Congress.)

No stomach for capital punishment

It's said in West Coast legal circles that Californians like to hand down the death penalty, but they haven't the stomach to carry it out. But now, 1 California-based federal appellate judge wants to help his state find that stomach.

The Los Angeles Times' Henry Weinstein reports on the suggestions to streamline and expedite executions that death penalty proponent Arthur L. Alarcón, a former Los Angeles prosecutor now a Senior Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, has set forth in "Remedies for California's Death Row Gridlock," 80 Southern California Law Review 697 (May 2007).

Statistics indeed show that much is awry:

► 667 inmates are on death row, adjacent to the lethal-injection chamber at San Quentin Prison in California's Bay Area (left).

► 88 have no lawyer, on account of a chronic shortage of attorneys willing and able to take death cases.

► Some prisoners have been on death row since 1978, when the state, in the wake of the Supreme Court's revival of the death penalty in Gregg v. Georgia (1976), enacted a new death penalty law.

► The 1st execution after enactment of that law came 14 years later, in 1992.

► Since then there've been 12 more executions, fewer than 1 a year.

► More condemned prisoners have died from natural causes -- 38 -- or suicide -- 14 -- than by execution.

► The longest stay on death row before execution was 24 years 8 months; the shortest, 9 years 7 months.

Alarcón would jumpstart the system in part by a shift of the automatic review process from the state's Supreme Court to its intermediate appellate courts and by "a major infusion of cash," intended to attract more defense lawyers.

More lawyers would lead to more litigation, and not only of the lethal injection challenges that've stalled executions in California for well over a year. Also likely: further pressing of a claim familiar to international lawyers. The claim's won favor in the European Court of Human Rights and, to cite a few examples, Britain's Privy Council and India's and Zimbabwe's highest courts. To date, however, it's caught the eye of only Justices John Paul Stevens and Stephen G. Breyer on the U.S. Supreme Court. It is, of course, the "death row phenomenon" claim that holding a person under sentence of death for years at a time is itself punishment violative of fundamental rights. It's a claim that last year the Ninth Circuit avoided in the case of the last man executed, on account of procedural default, and 1 that, as Alarcón observes in his 12th footnote, California's Supreme Court dodged in People v. Hill, 839 P.2d 984 (1992). Notably, the dodge came 20 years after the same court wrote in People v. Anderson, 493 P.2d 880, words that seemed to presage the death row phenomenon decisions that elsewhere would follow:

The cruelty of capital punishment lies not only in the execution itself and the pain incident thereto, but also in the dehumanizing effects of the lengthy imprisonment prior to execution during which the judicial and administrative procedures essential to due process of law are carried out.

In passing: Elizabeth P. Hoisington

Marking the passing of a woman profiled by IntLawGrrls:

Elizabeth P. Hoisington died at age 88 last month in Springfield, Virginia. As noted here, in 1970 Hoisington, director of the Women's Army Corps since 1966, became, along with Anna Mae Hays, 1 of the 1st 2 women to be made brigadier generals in the U.S. Army. The public response underscores the scarcity of women leaders not so long ago:

Their promotions were a public relations coup for the Army. A photograph of Gen. William Westmoreland, the Army chief of staff, kissing Hoisington at the ceremony was featured in newspapers and in the World Book encyclopedia. She and Hays appeared on the Dick Cavett, David Frost and 'Today' shows, and Hoisington -- who possessed a bright smile and an outgoing personality -- was a guest on the popular game show 'What's My Line?'

On September 5, ...

... 1997 (10 years ago today), Mother Teresa (below), the Roman Catholic nun who won the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the poor, died of a heart attack at 87 at the headquarters of the Missionaries of Charity, the religious order she founded, in Calcutta, India. She was born Agnes Bojaxhiu in Skopje, now part of Macedonia, but took the name "Teresa" while training as a nun in Ireland. She has been much in the news of late on account of the publication this week of Come Be My Light, writings that reveal her persistent doubts about faith. A critical analysis by Chitrita Banerji -- of Teresa's "shrewd" characterization of Calcutta as poor as a means to draw attention to her work -- is here.
... 1972 (35 years years ago today), an ordeal that had begun 23 hours earlier when terrorists invaded the Olympic Village in Munich, Germany, ended with gunfire at a military airport and the deaths of 4 assailants, 1 police officer, and 11 members of Israel's Olympic team.

... and counting ...

(Occasional sobering thoughts.) As President George W. Bush (dressed in civvies, no military garb) announced during a surprise visit to Iraq that some U.S. troops might be sent home if what he characterized as "gains in security in Iraq" continued, and as Britain pulled its troops out of Basra, the area of its prime responsibility in Iraq, here's the count: even by Iraq Body Count's low-end figure, civilian casualties since the war began now exceed 71,000. Specifically, it reports that as of yesterday, between 71,259 and 77,808 Iraqi women, children, and men had died in the conflict -- an increase of 1,925 to 2,003 deaths in the last 3 weeks. By the U.S. Defense Department's own figures, meanwhile, total coalition servicemember fatalities now exceed 4,000. Specifically, 3,741 American servicemembers had been killed through September 2. Total coalition fatalities: 4,038 persons. (That's 47 servicemember deaths in 3 weeks, all Americans.) The Department's figures on wounded remained at 27,279 servicemembers wounded, 8,163 of whom required medical air transport. Military casualties in the conflict in Afghanistan stand at 438 Americans and 239 other coalition servicemembers, an increase of 11 and 14, respectively, in the last 3 weeks. Reported injuries in Afghanistan inexplicably dropped, as they've done more than once before, so no report on them.

Bhutto in her own words

If you've been following politics in Pakistan, as IntLawGrrls has here, you know that former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto (left) is on the verge of returning home -- and that General/President Pervez Musharraf's less than thrilled at the prospect.
Bhutto tells why she's about to end self-exile in this Huffington Post essay. Her bottom line's a political PR classic:

I didn't choose this life. It chose me.

On September 4, ...

... 1957 (50 years ago today), Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus ordered the state's National Guard to surround Central High School and forbid entry to African-American teenagers -- 5 young women and 4 young men known as the "Little Rock 9" -- due to be enrolled pursuant to a school board integration plan in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's holding in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) that the Constitution forbids segregation of schoolchildren on the basis of race. The crisis continued for weeks, and on September 25, President Dwight Eisenhower sent the U.S. Army to Little Rock to escort the children to and from school. The school board's bid to halt desegregation the following year prompted Cooper v. Aaron, in which the Supreme Court, meeting in a special summer session, unanimously reaffirmed Brown and asserted judicial supremacy in interpretation of the Constitution. (Legal History Blog's roundup of books on the Little Rock crisis is here.)
... 1957 (50 years ago today), following a 3-year inquiry, a government-sponsored commission headed by Sir John Wolfenden issued a 155-page "Report on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution," which concluded that "homosexual behaviour between consenting adults should no longer be a criminal offence." Supported by the Archbishop of Canterbury as well as health and law enforcement professionals, the recommendations paved the way for England's decriminalization of sodomy in 1967. Disregard of these events in 1986 became one basis on which the U.S. Supreme Court, in its 2003 decision in Lawrence v. Texas, held that the U.S. Constitution forbids criminalization of same-sex sodomy.
... 1962 (45 years ago today), U.S. President John F. Kennedy issued a statement warning Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that the placement in Cuba of "long-range missiles would raise the gravest issues," as Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (at left, conferring with the President that same year), wrote in his 1978 biography, Robert Kennedy and His Times (ch. 22). The statement derived from an August 29 memorandum on national self-defense in international law, prepared by Assistant Attorney General Norbert Schlei. The Presidential statement proved a precursor of the Cuban Missile Crisis of the following month, about which more later this anniversary year. For now, consider Schlesinger's account of the President's response when Schlei invoked the 1823 Monroe Doctrine as a basis for U.S. claims to "special rights" in the Western Hemisphere:

John Kennedy snapped: 'The Monroe Doctrine. What the hell is that?' -- meaning: what the hell standing did it have in international law? The answer was, of course, none; and Kennedy, who knew how much Latin Americans resented unilateral declarations from Washington, never mentioned the doctrine throughout the subsequent crisis.

Happy 1/2-birthday to us

Demurred on the delightful tradition of unbirthdays introduced to Alice during her visit to Wonderland, but can't resist celebration of IntLawGrrls' 1/2-birthday!
Since giving voice to international law, policy, and practice 6 months ago, we've grown to 15 contributors, who've provided 550 posts and happily welcomed more than 15,000 visitors to our site. Our sister site Legal History Blog now kindly includes our posts -- the "on this days" and others -- in a special, easy-to-reach link. And a recent ranking placed us among the top 50 law-related blogs. But enough of numbers (heeding a complaint about others' blogcounting from Feminist Law Professors).
Heartfelt thanks to all for your support. Feel free to add your voice any time.

The criminal costs of "luxury"

Ever buy a knockoff like the one at right, then keep mum when complimented on your lovely Prada bag? This commentary'll have you thinking twice before buying that next flea market find: Dana Thomas (below), Newsweek's style and cultural reporter and author of Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster (2007), writes that "the average luxury bag retails for 10 to 12 times its production cost." That twelvefold markup spikes demand for knockoffs, so that more than a tenth of the world's garments and goods are fake. According to Interpol, counterfeit clothes make their way into global commerce by the same conduits that bring other contraband -- drugs and arms -- and other crimes -- human trafficking and terrorism -- to the mainstream.
There's the production end to ponder, too: Noting that "[m]ost fakes today are produced in China, a good many of them by children," Thomas writes wrenchingly of accompanying police to a Guangzhou sweatshop where

we found two dozen children, ages 8 to 13, gluing and sewing together fake luxury-brand handbags. ... As we made our way back to the police vans, the children threw bottles and cans at us. They were now jobless and, because the factory owner housed them, homeless. It was 'Oliver Twist' in the 21st century.

Surely there's a need, as Thomas argues, to address these transnational criminal abuses. And then, it seems from this vantage point, to call into question that unconscionable markup on "genuine" goods.

On September 3, ...

... 2007 (today), Americans celebrate Labor Day, a no-work day in honor of working folk. Most other countries mark this on May Day. It's said, though, that U.S. President Grover Cleveland shied from the 1st of May out of concern that it was too closely linked to labor militancy and to the Haymarket Riots of May 1886. Politics notwithstanding, it's a great final-summer-fling-weekend for all. Cause enough to celebrate.
... 1981, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 1979, entered into force. On adherence to the Convention, the U.N. Division on the Advancement of Women writes:

Currently, 185 countries -- over ninety percent of the members of the United Nations -- are party to the Convention. An additional State has signed, but not ratified the treaty, therefore it is not bound to put the provisions of the Convention into practice.

That lone signer-not-a-party? The United States.

More on Merkel

Making freedom one of the main themes of both her domestic and foreign policy, Angela Merkel isn’t mealy mouthed about human rights. Where former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder spoke only behind closed doors to his Russian or Chinese counterparts on the subject of human rights, Merkel (right), just named the most powerful woman in the world, has publicly denounced increased human rights and press freedom violations in Russia and raised human rights issues several times during her visit this past week to China (she's also told President Bush to shut down Guantánamo and criticized both torture and the death penalty). Everywhere, she makes a point of meeting with opposition leaders, as she did in China, meeting with journalists, a photographer and well known blogger who’ve all run into trouble for criticizing the government. Germany’s business leaders are not so happy about Merkel’s outspokenness, fearing it will hinder trade. Indeed, where Schröder brought back lucrative contracts from Russia and China, Merkel has been less successful. But German politicians say this has nothing to do with Merkel’s human rights stance: business is bad for everyone in Russia right now, and it’s harder to win contracts in China as competition stiffens. Obviously, Merkel’s East German upbringing is what makes the difference. Perhaps the fact that she knows what she’s talking about will make a difference with her audiences as well, encouraging opposition and getting human rights onto the agenda.

Women keeping the peace

Check out this post by our Opinio Juris colleague, Kevin Jon Heller, on the United Nations' India Formed Police Unit stationed in Monrovia, Liberia. At a ceremony there this weekend U.N. envoy Alan Doss said that the all-woman peacekeeping unit "not only demonstrates gender equality but also serves as an encouragement for Liberian women to become police officers themselves." Numbers remain low, however. Heller reports out that only 6% of Liberian police -- and only 2% of U.N. peacekeepers -- are women.

On September 2, ...

... 1945, nationalists led by Ho Chi Minh, in Ba Dinh Square, Hanoi (left), proclaimed the Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. It began by quoting language familiar to all students of the U.S. Declaration of 1776: "'All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.'" It continued with a reference to France's Declaration of the Rights of Man, then proceeded to condemn abuses by "the French imperialists" who wished to continue rule in Vietnam. For another 3 decades Ho's supporters would fight, 1st the French and then the Americans (in a war that President George W. Bush has cited, controversially, as a cautionary tale against U.S. troop withdawal from Iraq).

... 1990, having attained the ratification or accession of 20 U.N. member states, the Convention on the Rights of the Child entered into force. Today it has near-universal state party membership; the United States is almost the lone exception. The United States has ratified both the Optional Protocols to the Convention, however: 1 deals with sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography; the other, involvement of children in armed conflict. Moreover, as explored here, the Convention itself became a key source of consultation in the U.S. Supreme Court's 2005 decision invalidating the juvenile death penalty in Roper v. Simmons.

Women on top of the world

"Angela Merkel tops the list of the most powerful women in the world," declares a LeMonde online portfolio. Merkel (left), as we've posted, has indeed taken initiatives of international import since becoming Germany's chancellor in 2005. So it's not surprisingly that for the 2d year in a row she's 1st among the 100 women on the list compiled annually by the business magazine Forbes (online registration required). Here're the top 15 (quotations from LeMonde's commentary):
1. Angela Merkel: "Her talent as a negotiator during the G-8 summit held in June in Germany was impressive."
2. Wu Yi (right): "Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi, nicknamed the 'Woman of Iron,' has pushed U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice out of 2d place. Her principal skill, according to the magazine: success in the economic realm."
3. Ho Ching: "CEO of the Temasek Holdings, a public investment company in Singapore, and also the wife of Singapore's Prime Minister, she has conquered 3d place."
4. Condoleezza Rice: "The American Secretary of State has slipped to this rank, although the magazine takes note of the extent of her activities in the Middle East" (coincidentally, today's New York Times profiles Rice "As Her Star Wanes").
5. Indra K. Nooyi (left): "Executive for the American agribusiness giant PepsiCo, she often wears a sari and does not have the typical profile of the CEO of a multinational company. Forbes underscores her role in the company's growth."
6. Sonia Gandhi: "Heir the the famous dynasty, President of India's Congress Party."
7. Cynthia Carroll: CEO of Britain's Anglo American, "the world's second largest producer of aluminum."
8. Patricia A. Woertz: "CEO of the agribusiness company Archer Daniels Midland," United States.
9. Irene B. Rosenfeld: "CEO of the American giant Kraft Foods."
10. Patricia Russo: Chief executive, Alcatel-Lucent, United States.
11. Michèle Alliot-Marie (right): "The Minister of the Interior is the 1st Frenchwoman to have been selected by Forbes. She's also served as the French Minister of Defense.
12. Christine Lagarde: "A political newcomer, Christine Lagarde is the Minister of Economics and Finance" in France, and is the 1st woman to hold that position in a G-7 country.
13. Anne M. Mulcahy: Chairman and CEO, Xerox, United States.
14. Anne Lauvergeon: "President of the board of Areva, a French nuclear concern."
15. Mary Sammons: Chairman, CEO, President, Rite Aid Corp., United States.
Others who appear on this year's top 100 list, in the legal, educational, and political arenas of particular interest to IntLawGrrls (omitted are business and television folks, as well as those whose claim rests solely on their marital link to an elected male leader):
20. Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
23. Elizabeth II: Britain's Queen.
25. Hillary Rodham Clinton: U.S. Senator from New York and Presidential candidate.
26. Nancy Pelosi: Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.
27. Michelle Bachelet (left): President of Chile.
32. Dr. Julie Louise Gerberding: Director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, United States.
37. Dr. Margaret Chan: Director-general, World Health Organization.
38. Helen Clark: Prime Minister of New Zealand.
39. Tzipi Livni: Foreign affairs Minister of Israel.
47. Dr. Drew Gilpin Faust: President of Harvard University.
50. Tarja Halonen: President of Finland.
51. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo: President of the Philippines.
58. Mary McAleese: President of Ireland.
59. Dr. Neelie Kroes: from the Netherlands, serving as Commissioner for Competition for the European Union.
67. Dora Bakoyannis: Foreign Minister of Greece.
71. Aung San Suu Kyi: Nobel Peace Peacewinner, in 1990 elected leader of Myanmar but denied the post by the country's ruling junta.
81. Portia Simpson Miller: Prime Minister of Jamaica.
89. Luisa Diogo (right): Prime Minister of Mozambique.
92. Dr. Sima Samar: Chairman, Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.
99. Sheikha Lubna Al Qasimi (left): Minister of the Economy, United Arab Emirates.
And last but by no means least:
100. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf: President of Liberia.
A good list, but by no means complete. (Only 1 judge in the top 100? Alas, only 1 educator and no one from the arts?) Anyone missing whom you'd like to nominate?

Global warming: Old news?

Check out this thought-provoking essay on why the climate change crisis doesn't pull more political weight. Karlyn Bowman (right), a senior research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, writes: "We're all environmentalists now, and it is hard to make a political issue out of a commitment shared by most of the population."
So what's to be done if nothing's being done in furtherance of that commitment?

On September 1, ...

... 2007 (today), New Zealanders will celebrate a national day that deserves to go global. It's R.A.K. Day, or Random Acts of Kindness Day. Ideas for the day are simple enough for schoolchildren -- "Start a conversation with a new student or with a classmate who seems lonely. " -- and complex enough for adults, even for corporate bodies -- "[M]ake a difference to a child, family or community overseas." Your ideas?
... 1876, Harriet Shaw Weaver was born in Frodsham, Cheshire, England. When her parents forbade her to go to university, she became a social worker and women's suffragist, and eventually joined England's Women's Social and Political Union. She provided essential financial support to writers Ezra Pound, an editor of her periodical The Egoist, and James Joyce, whose A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses 1st appeared in serial form in that periodical.