It is hard to look at the International Criminal Court's conviction of former Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga for enlisting child soldiers into his militia more than a decade ago and not consider it a positive step on the road towards justice. Perhaps, too, it marks a point where...

I was a teenager in 1972 when Deliverance debuted. It was a movie about four friends on a whitewater canoeing trip starring Burt Reynolds. The friends got separated in the backwoods, and the characters played by Ned Beatty and Jon Voight were taken at gunpoint by two hillbillies. In the...

The only pledge a candidate for public office should make is one that reads something like:

"I, _________________, pledge to represent the interests of my constituents and my country to the best of my ability and without regard to my personal enrichment or the impact on my chances of...

The continued deterioration of conditions on the ground in Libya, Bahrain, and Yemen has led to increased discussion of war crimes and the potential consequences. It is important to remember that not every act of oppression or violence is automatically a war crime, even when it occurs under circumstances that...

The Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (ICC), Luis Moreno-Ocampo, following a unanimous vote by the fifteen members of the United Nations Security Council to refer the matter to the ICC, is assessing whether to launch a criminal investigation into events related to the violence in Libya. Mr. Moreno-Ocampo pledged...

Pompeia, the wife of Julius Caesar, had to be above suspicion. Ginni, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has to be at the center of it.

"The government has no right to tell me who I can do business with" was something I heard when I was an...

I saw this sticker last week when I was at the old market in Charleston, South Carolina.

Those stickers are quite common and seemed innocent enough, but then I had a Glenn Beck moment where the hidden symbols became clear and revealed their deeper,...

Vernon Hill grew up in northern Virginia not far from where Deamonte Driver lived in Prince George's County, Maryland. When Vernon Hill's little one, Duffy, was diagnosed with 11 bad teeth they were surgically removed and life went on. The $2,400 cost of little Duffy's medical procedure was covered by...

The arrival of Naomi Campbell to give evidence at the war crimes trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor in The Hague this month sounded like something from a movie script. Prosecutors announced that their key witness to prove Taylor was in possession of Blood Diamonds looted from Sierra Leone...

Paris-based attorney Katherine Iliopoulos has a new article out at Crimes of War Project. She writes:

A war crimes tribunal set up in Bangladesh to try those responsible for atrocities during the country's 1971 liberation war with Pakistan is facing increased scrutiny by the international community. While the International Crimes...

As a member of the U.S. Senate, Barack Obama criticised President Bush's military commissions as a "flawed system" that compromised America's values. Four years later, President Obama is set to preside over the next chapter in the Guantanamo paradox, as his administration attempts to deliver justice through a lightly revised...

When a Judge writes an opinion and uses phrases like "distort the evidence" and "ignores the facts" and then calls the logic of one party's argument a "leap" you can pretty much guess the ending.

In an opinion dated May 26 in a case entitled Abdah v. Obama, Judge Henry...

I spent my entire adult life serving as a military officer where I was precluded from direct involvement in partisan political activity. I retired from the Air Force in October 2008 and for the first time got to take an active role in a political campaign, and I got to...

There are a few jobs in Washington where a losing record will get you a pink slip, ushered to the door with your belongings in a cardboard box, and unceremoniously booted to the curb. It's nothing personal, it's just business; a successful franchise only tolerates a loser for so long....

"The founders of (historically black) institutions knew, of course, that inequality would persist long into the future. They recognized that barriers in our laws, and in our hearts, wouldn't vanish overnight. But they also recognized a larger truth; a distinctly American truth. They recognized that with the right education, those...

My father was a 100 percent disabled veteran of World War II. He left home a healthy man in the prime of life and returned seriously disabled by a broken back during a training accident. My earliest memories are of him going to the Bowman-Gray Hospital at Wake Forest University...

"I'm asking you to believe." That's what it said at the top of the page on BarackObama.com, the wildly popular website for President Obama's successful 2008 campaign. On a page entitled "Strengthen America Overseas," candidate Obama said to believe that as president he would "restore America's standing, reputation and authority...

South Carolina has a reputation for setting the political bar as low as it can go and seeing who can slither under it. It's the place where in the 2000 presidential primaries Karl Rove put the shiv to John McCain's bid with a whisper campaign asking people if they'd be...

The exact time of death is uncertain, but sometime between Lincoln's Gettysburg Address in 1863 and today, "government of the people, by the people, and for the people" drew a final breath and perished. In place of the cause for which the fallen "gave the last full measure of devotion,"...

If it was a crime to misappropriate a word or phrase -- to treat it like you own it and toss it around arbitrarily whenever it suits your purposes -- then some prominent conservatives and liberals would be serving hard time. Of course there don't seem to be any real...