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It's been long established in international law that the crime occurs where the harm occurs. That's why the Lockerbie bombers were tried in Scotland.
by jordanb 13y ago
It's been long established in international law that the crime occurs where the harm occurs. That's why the Lockerbie bombers were tried in Scotland.
- dragonwriter 13y agoThe Lockerbie bombers were tried in the Netherlands by a Scottish Court under Scots Law, with a weird jurisdictional set up, as part of a negotiated compromise to resolve US/UK demands that they be tried in the US or UK, and Libyan demands that they not be tried in the US or UK, and the location and other arrangements for the trial do not represent any "long-established principle in international law", unless you include the principle that international law is mostly just whatever the involved sovereign states agree to at the time on the specific issue in question.
- smutticus 13y ago>international law is mostly just whatever the involved sovereign states agree to at the time on the specific issue in question. Thank you. I've long made the argument that international law is arbitrary and capricious without much buy-in from those around me. It's good to hear you say it.
- dragonwriter 13y agoI'm not saying that there aren't some fairly well-settled substantive principles of international law that aren't just arbitrary and capricious, I'm just saying that you don't find any of them illustrated by the decision of where to locate the Lockerbie bombing trial. (OTOH, even where there are well-established principles of international law, the absence of consistent enforcement and application leads to them not being inviolate.)
- solnyshok 13y agoUgh, in that case NSA staff and Mr. Obama, should come to stand before European court and after that to all other countries that wish so (Russia, China, etc.)