In the space of just over ten years, the collection and use of biometric data in the context of international military operations has gone from being virtually unheard of to being an everyday occurrence. The Canadian and US armed forces operating in Afghanistan, for example, have together collected the digital fingerprints, eye scans, and digital photographs of more than 2.5 million Afghans. The introduction of biometrics technology to warfare has undoubtedly increased the security of the armed forces that use it and made it easier for them to kill or capture their enemies. Its effectiveness, reliability, and convenience have all been praised. Due in part to its novelty, however, law and policy relating to the use of biometrics in conflict situations remain underdeveloped. This underdevelopment poses considerable risks for the already vulnerable populations who are being subjected to these programs, potentially including violations of their right to privacy, misuse of their personal data, or their misidentification as enemies or threats. This article weighs these benefits and risks associated with biometrics technology. It analyzes the extent to which law and policy already govern the collection and use of biometrics by armed forces at both the domestic and international levels. It explores why the United States and Canada — the two states whose armed forces appear to be the most heavily engaged in the collection of biometric data abroad — have adopted such different policies with respect to the use of biometrics. It explains why the current international legal and policy vacuum in relation to battlefield biometrics is unacceptable and concludes that the time to discuss best practices is now. Ten non-legally binding guidelines are proposed for consideration and potential adoption by states.

Criticized by many as the new “weapon of mass destruction,” lauded by some as the “weapon of choice in combat,” the use of depleted uranium ammunition in warfare raises many legal questions. Designed as a point weapon to penetrate armoured targets, scientific studies prove that depleted uranium has both chemically and radioactively toxic characteristics. Clearly, every weapon of war will have some affect on human health and the environment, but the laws of armed conflict have evolved to place limits on the level of harm viewed as permissible and legal. Does this “weapon of choice,” therefore, breach the international laws of armed conflict?

Although the subject of media frenzy in the immediate aftermath of the 1999 Kosovo conflict, the use of depleted uranium ammunition in Iraq 2003 raised little media attention. How could the use of such a controversial weapon in 1991 go largely unnoticed just four years later? Does this lack of global condemnation necessarily lead to the conclusion that the “dictates of the public conscience” have evolved in regard to the use of this previously controversial weapon of war? This article seeks to analyze the legality of the use of depleted uranium ammunition — the main question being whether the existing laws of armed conflict are already sufficient to address any human and environmental concerns.

The international lawyer sometimes reads the current literature on the Canadian Arctic with a sense of uneasiness. A wide range of writers and scholars maintain an active discourse on questions relating to what is usually called “Arctic sovereignty.” It is not that the lawyer feels he has any special wisdom or monopoly on discussions of questions of “sovereignty.” The sovereignty concept has several layers of meaning, only one of which can be said to be the special preserve of the lawyer. Public discussion in Canada is largely, and legitimately, focussed on policy questions that flow from sovereignty, from Canada's right to exercise authority, to the exclusion of that of any other state, over vast areas of arctic lands and waters. If war is too important a matter to be left to the generals, perhaps sovereignty is too important a matter to be left to the lawyers. Nevertheless, the lawyer is sometimes troubled by a tendency of non-legal commentators to blur his favourite distinctions and to question some of his most firmly held assumptions.

Les principes généraux de droit sont reconnus par l’article 38, I du Statut de la Cour Internationale de Justice, comme faisant partie des sources du droit international public. Get article énonce:

La Cour, dont la mission est de régler conformément au droit international des différends qui lui sont soumis, applique: …

c) les principes généraux de droit reconnus par les nations civilisées;

Cependant ces principes ne sont pas définis au niveau de ce texte.

L’article 38 précité reprend ainsi, presque mot pour mot, les dispositions correspondantes du Statut de la Cour Permanente de Justice Internationale. En fonction de celui-ci, la jurisdiction internationale a quelquefois fait application des principes généraux de droit, qu’elle a dû tenter de définir.

To secure greater inter-state cooperation in criminal law enforcement, Canada has entered into a number of extradition treaties. Yet alongside this network of extradition treaties lies a network of human rights treaties to which Canada has also agreed to be bound. Given the inherently international nature of extradition, and the interconnection between Canada's human rights treaties and its obligations under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, one would have thought that Canada's international human rights obligations might play some role in bolstering the protection afforded by the Charter to the rights of an individual facing extradition from Canada, even if the threshold for invoking the latter remains high. And yet, while a review of Canada's extradition jurisprudence for the past thirty years confirms that a role for human rights has emerged in Canadian extradition law, scant attention has been paid to Canada's international human rights treaty obligations as treaty obligations when deciding whether to extradite upon receiving a valid request. The author argues that if Canada's international human rights obligations were considered, along with Canada's domestic Charter obligations, greater guidance would be made available as to the appropriate balance of rights and obligations at stake, while also affording equal treatment to all of the treaty obligations relevant to extradition.

The history of European integration unmistakably shows that it has progressed step by step and is indeed an ongoing and irreversible process. One such step is the conclusion of the Lisbon Treaty, which came into force on 1 December 2009, following negotiations spanning nearly a decade. The treaty aims, inter alia, at improving the functioning of the European Union (EU) and significantly amends the treaty basis of the EU as a supranational organization. It formally establishes the EU as a legal entity under public international law, strengthens the role of the European Parliament, and significantly reforms the role of the high representative of the union for foreign affairs and security policy. Moreover, the treaty has made the EU Charter on Fundamental Rights a legally binding and enforceable instrument and has expanded the competences of the EU in the fields of trade and other external commercial relations by providing it with exclusive competence to conduct the EU’s Common Commercial Policy. The author reviews these and other innovations of the Lisbon Treaty and briefly evaluates the treaty and its implications for the EU.

In the spring of 1999, the NATO allies conducted a bombing campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia for several weeks. The campaign was a response to the failure of negotiations at Rambouillet, France, relating to a situation in Kosovo that United Nations agencies had characterized as a “humanitarian crisis.” In late April, only a few days after filing an Optional Clause declaration under the Statute of the International Court of Justice accepting the compulsory jurisdiction of the court subject to reservations, Yugoslavia initiated proceedings in the court against ten NATO allies, including Canada. The application was accompanied by a request for the indication of “provisional measures” pursuant to the statute, enjoining the NATO allies from continuing the use of force against Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia relied upon its new declaration and upon the compromissary clause of the Genocide Convention as grounds of jurisdiction. In June 1999, the court refused the request for provisional measures on the ground that it lacked prima facie jurisdiction. Canada and other remaining respondents filed preliminary objections on jurisdiction and admissibility. The objections on jurisdiction were based on the grounds that had been advanced at the provisional measures stage and largely endorsed by the court: first, that Yugoslavia was not then a member of the United Nations and was therefore not entitled to make an Optional Clause declaration; second, that the declaration was limited to future disputes; and, third, that the subject matter of the dispute was not covered by the Genocide Convention, which could therefore not be invoked to establish jurisdiction.

Following oral hearings in April 2004, the court ruled in a judgment of 15 December 2004 that it lacked jurisdiction. The ruling was based exclusively on the fact that Yugoslavia lacked United Nations membership and standing in the court in 1999. The judgment concludes that the exception in Article 35(2) of the statute relating to “treaties in force” does not entitle a non-member of the United Nations to appear before the court in a matter related to the Genocide Convention, which the Court interprets as applying only to treaties in existence before 1945. This reasoning came as a surprise, since the court had assiduously avoided the issue of UN membership both in its provisional measures ruling and in its decisions in closely related proceedings taken by Bosnia and Croatia against Yugoslavia pursuant to the Genocide Convention. It remains to be seen how the judgment will be reconciled with rulings already made on jurisdiction in the proceedings taken by Bosnia, where jurisdiction has already been confirmed and where hearings on the merits are scheduled for 2006.

Over the past century, the laws of armed conflict have limited or prohibited the use of a number of weapons, principally due to their cruel effects or indiscriminate nature. Among the examples are chemical and biological weapons, anti-personnel mines, and blinding laser weapons. In recent years, one of the most controversial armaments used by states has been the cluster bomb. Cluster weapons are inexpensively produced area weapons with a high propensity for failure. The source of constant condemnation since the Vietnam conflict, the legality of cluster weapons remains highly questionable. With such weapons, the question is not so much whether there is a need to create new instruments of limitation, or indeed prohibition, but whether the existing laws of armed conflict are already sufficient to address any human and environmental concerns.

The uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the imminent Law of the Sea Conference is inevitable in the light of the lack of consensus on many of the most pressing problems of ocean law. Nowhere is this lack of agreement more evident than in the law regulating the world’s fishery resources.

During the past few years the attention of international lawyers and experts in related disciplines has been focused on the crucial considerations of continental shelf and ocean bed resources. Yet the legal problems related to international fisheries persist and increase.