Would it Be Illegal for Iran to Close the Strait of Hormuz?

In response to international economic and diplomatic pressure to halt its nuclear program, Iran is reportedly contemplating closing the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow and critically important waterway through which approximately a third of global sea-based oil shipments pass each year. The precise nature of this potential action is a little unclear from media reports. Some accounts state that the closure would pertain only to foreign warships that do not receive Iranian permission to transit. Others give the impression that Iran may bar all transit, including oil shipments. The difference is significant, but many seem to think that Iran would be acting illegally either way. My aim here is to briefly explore that view under international law.

The principal hurdle to either type of closure is the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, a treaty that Iran has not ratified but that is widely accepted as codifying preexisting customary rules that bind parties and non-parties alike. One such rule is that in a strait all ships and aircraft shall enjoy an unimpeded right of “transit passage,” which is “the exercise . . . of the freedom of navigation and overflight solely for the purpose of continuous and expeditious transit of the strait” (art. 38). A corollary is that states bordering straits “shall not hamper transit passage,” and that “[t]here shall be no suspension of transit passage” (art. 44).

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Some Thoughts on Kiobel

A few weeks ago I wrote a post providing a brief background on Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., the case in which the Supreme Court will likely decide whether the Alien Tort Statute confers federal jurisdiction over claims alleging corporate violations of customary international law. I’d like to offer a couple of additional thoughts on that upcoming decision.

Although not directly at issue in the litigation, Kiobel seems to raise an interesting question about the method by which courts go about ascertaining custom. A core principle of international law is that binding customary norms develop from “general and consistent practice that states follow from a sense of legal obligation.” According to Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, the ATS provides for federal jurisdiction over civil actions by aliens who have alleged violations of a particular subset of these norms–i.e., those that are “accepted by the civilized world” and defined with a fairly high degree of specificity. Thus, determining whether the ATS provides jurisdiction in any given case often requires a judicial analysis of the nature, extent, and rationale of the practice that has allegedly given rise to the norm that the defendant has allegedly violated. In some cases–such as those involving piracy, offenses against ambassadors, and torture–the jurisdictional analysis is relatively easy because the underlying norm is widely accepted and well-defined. In others, it may be difficult to ascertain whether a given norm has the requisite levels of state acceptance and definitional precision.

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Learned Hand on the Politics of Judicial Appointments

In debates over potential reforms to the judicial appointments process, there seems to be a pervasive sense that the problem of politicization is a relatively new one. In terms of the frequency with which the Senate rejects even highly qualified nominees and the extent to which overt partisanship has crept into the evaluation of candidates for lower courts, that sense seems pretty accurate. More than either of his two most recent predecessors, President Obama has had a difficult time securing Senate approval of his picks for the judiciary, as I previously discussed here.

I think it’s helpful to appreciate, however, that the basic problem of partisanship trumping merit as a determinant of judicial appointments is anything but new. Recently, I was reading Gerald Gunther’s biography of Learned Hand and came across a reminder of how the appointments process has long been an overwhelmingly political affair, even for lower-court judgeships. Gunther explains that when Jerome Frank’s death in the late 1950s left vacant a seat on the Second Circuit, advocates from opposing political orientations lobbied heavily for their favored candidates to receive the next appointment. Many Republicans pushed for the selection of Leonard Moore, the U.S. Attorney for E.D.N.Y., while Democrats favored Irving Kaufman, the federal judge who had presided over the espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Moreover, many on both sides appear to have viewed the choice between Moore and Kaufman as essentially political rather than merit-based. One of the significant arguments made in favor of Kaufman, for example, was that elevating him to the Second Circuit could function as a way for the President and Senate to signal their approval of his handling of the Rosenberg trial, of which leftist organizations had been fiercely critical.

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