This week, the federal government announced a settlement of a claim under the North American Free Trade Agreement, Can T.S. 1994 No. 2 (“NAFTA”) by AbitibiBowater Inc. (“Abitibi”) against Canada as a result of the dispute between the company and Newfoundland. In 2008, the Newfoundland government hastily expropriated nearly all of Abitibi’s Newfoundland assets after [...]

Is the unilateral declaration of independence by the Provisional Institutions of Self-Government of Kosovo in accordance with international law? The International Court of Justice (ICJ), in a 10-4 decision, answered this question in the affirmative in an advisory opinion to the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN), titled Accordance with International Law of the [...]

International Court of Justice to Hold Special Elections to Replace Retiring Judges Recently, Justices Shi Jiuyong of China and Thomas Buergenthal of the United States announced their resignations from the International Court of Justice (“ICJ”), both before fulfilling the nine-year terms they were elected to. As a result, two special elections for their replacements will [...]

(The Court returns after a week transitioning from our 2009-2010 academic-year editorial team to our summer editors. We thank our readers for their patience during this break. From May 3 through to the end of August, we move to our summer publication schedule of three postings per week [usually Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays] with occasional [...]

Baltasar Garzon, universal jurisdiction’s singular Spanish exponent, has been indicted for exceeding his domestic judicial purview. As noted briefly in TheCourt.ca last week, Garzon, the investigating magistrate who began proceedings against, inter alia, General Augusto Pinochet, Argentinian “dirty war” generals, al Qaeda members, suspected Basque terrorists, and the “Bush Six”, has been brought to legal [...]

A few weeks ago, the Supreme Court denied leave to appeal in Slahi v. Canada (Justice), 2009 FCA 259, first canvassed on TheCourt.ca by Padraic Ryan here. My post aims to briefly examine the international law aspects of the case and their relation to the Charter. Slahi affirms the recent line of jurisprudence (culminating in Canada [...]

On January 27, 2010, the UK Supreme Court struck down two UK Orders in Council that formed the entirety of the country’s terror financing and asset-freezing law (Her Majesty’s Treasury v. Mohammed Jabar Ahmed and others; Mohammed al-Ghabra; Hani El Sayed Sabaei Youssef ([2010] UKSC 2 & [2010] UKSC 5). The Court held the laws [...]

If the name Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab doesn’t ring a bell, you might know him better as the “Christmas Day bomber”. On December 25, Abdulmutallab managed to avoid the “rigorous” airline security in Amsterdam and boarded Flight 253 heading to Detroit with explosives strapped to his underwear. As Flight 253 began its descent towards Detroit, Abdulmutallab [...]

In light of what is going on across the pond these days, it behooves us to pay attention to what happens where you fail to separate state and religion. Though to be honest, when your head of state also serves as Supreme Governor of the Church of England, such an exercise might be somewhat difficult. [...]

In September, Abousfian Abdelrazik filed a civil suit against federal government officials seeking damages for the violation of his s. 6 Charter rights. In a June decision, Zinn J. of the Federal Court, in ordering the federal government to effect Mr. Abdelrazik’s return home after he had lived in the Canadian Embassy in Khartoum for [...]