The Roundtable
Welcome to the Roundtable, a forum for incisive commentary and analysis
on cases and developments in law and the legal system.
on cases and developments in law and the legal system.
 By Sebastian Bates
Sebastian Bates is a first-year law student at Keble College, Oxford University. As the month of March drew to a close, the eyes of the world turned towards Lausanne, Switzerland, where negotiations to draft an accord that would limit the Iranian nuclear program were extended. Reports claimed that the atmosphere of the talks had been tense – France had been become increasingly hawkish and the Iranian representatives ever-more intransigent as the March 31st deadline came and went. However, the talks were not without an element of collegiality. Both the American Secretary of Energy, Ernest J. Moniz, and the senior Iranian nuclear scientist, Ali Akbar Salehi, spent time teaching or studying at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and apparently developed a good rapport. No such warmth existed the last time the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America met for such widely‐publicized diplomatic talks. In 1980, then‐Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher led a delegation to Algiers to “resolve the crisis in relations” between the two countries “arising out of the November 1979 hostage crisis.” [1] On January 19, 1981, this delegation and its Iranian counterpart signed the Algiers Accords, which established the Iran‐United States Claims Tribunal. [2] The Accords assigned the Tribunal “the enormous task of adjudicating disputes involving billions of dollars in commercial debts, breached contracts, nationalizations, expropriations and other measures affecting property rights.” [3]
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By Sebastian Bates
Sebastian Bates is a first-year law student at Keble College, Oxford University. At some time between 1:52 p.m. and 3:39 p.m. on Wednesday, July 23, 2014, United States Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy fielded what may have been one of the most harrowing phone calls of his life. According to the New York Times, the phone call that Justice Kennedy received was part of a three-pronged strategy. The other two were appeals to the District Court of Arizona and a call to three members of the state’s Supreme Court. These strategies were employed by the lawyers of Joseph R. Wood III in their bid to save their client’s life. [1] Kennedy was asked to halt the execution on the grounds that the nearly two-hour long procedure, during which Mr. Wood appeared to gasp repeatedly, violated the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause of the Eighth Amendment. Justice Kennedy refused. Mr. Wood died shortly thereafter, at about ten minutes to four. The unusual and distressing circumstances of his death will undoubtedly raise questions about capital punishment, but his lawyers’ attempts to secure a stay of execution likely will provoke curiosity in those unfamiliar with the byzantine procedures of the Supreme Court. Why, reasonable minds may ask, did Justice Kennedy handle the matter? Surely the Court as a whole ought to have been consulted?  By Sebastian Bates Sebastian Bates is a first-year law student at Keble College, Oxford University. Toward the end of last year, the eyes of the British population were focused on Clacton, a parliamentary constituency named for the town of Clacton-on-Sea. The reason this inconspicuous municipality nestled on the coast of Essex made national and international headlines was made clear on October 13th, when the winner of the Clacton by-election, Douglas Carswell, took his seat as the United Kingdom Independence Party’s first member in the House of Commons. [1] The rise of this Eurosceptic party has shifted the UK’s politics – particularly those of the Conservative Party, which currently rules in coalition with the Liberal Democrats – significantly to the right, and its success in the Clacton by-election has many concerned. While it is hardly surprising that another parliamentary election has largely escaped public notice, yet another one concluded in the early evening of October 22nd, when it was announced that Raymond Asquith, the great-grandson of former UK Prime Minister H.H. Asquith would be taking a recently-vacated seat in Parliament. [2] However, sixty-two-year-old Raymond Asquith will not be sitting on the green benches of the House of Commons as his ancestor did; instead, the third Earl of Asquith and Oxford, as he is formally known, will be enshrined in the red-and-gold splendour of the House of Lords.  The image depicts President Uhuru Kenyatta’s motorcade after the 2013 general election in Nairobi, Kenya. By Sebastian Bates
Sebastian Bates is a first-year law student at Keble College, Oxford University. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has been the subject of controversy since its inception, which stemmed from adoption of the Rome Statute in 1998 (the Court did not come into being until 2002, when the Statute was ratified by the requisite sixty states). Many of the world’s most prominent countries – including China, Russia, and the United States, all permanent members of the Security Council – have not accepted the Court’s jurisdiction. In fact, the United States Congress has passed legislation, signed into law by President George Bush in 2002, that would allow the president to use “all means necessary and appropriate” – up to and including military force – in order to free American or allied personnel from detention by the ICC. [1] This has often been referred to as the “Hague Invasion Act.” [2] Others have criticized the Court for its slow prosecution of those accused of serious crimes under international law. Between 2002 and March 2014, the Court convicted only two defendants, both Congolese warlords. [3] Indeed, all of the twenty-one cases that have been brought before the ICC originated in the Democratic Republic of the Congo or elsewhere in Africa. [4] This has led to the most pernicious criticism of the Court: that it is a racist organization and is “nothing more than a tool to extend colonial domination.” [5] 
By Sebastian Bates
Sebastian Bates is a rising first-year law student at Keble College, Oxford University. Nearly seventy years ago, at the home of Crown Prince Wilhelm, the deposed heir to the Imperial German throne, President Truman of the United States, Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister, and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, the President of the National Government of the Republic of China, issued a proclamation that has since become known as the Potsdam Declaration. The agreement, which called for the “unconditional surrender of all the Japanese armed forces,” laid out the seven principles by which the Allies intended to end the war in the Pacific and administer a defeated Japan. [1] From the perspective of a student of constitutional law, the most important article of the Declaration is perhaps the tenth, which states that, under Allied occupation, “[t]he Japanese Government shall remove all obstacles to the revival and strengthening of democratic tendencies among the Japanese people. Freedom of speech, of religion, and of thought, as well as respect for the fundamental human rights shall be established.” [2]  By Sebastian Bates
Sebastian Bates is a rising first-year law student at Keble College, Oxford University. On July 5, President Barack Obama – a member, by virtue of his 2008 adoption, of the Crow Nation – announced in an opinion piece published in Indian Country Today that he would be visiting the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s reservation in North Dakota. President Obama’s visit, which was his first to Indian Country since taking office, was only the fourth presidential tour of a reservation in history and therefore attracted a great deal of media attention. His article, however, deserves some reflection as well. Or at least, one particular concept President Obama refers to does. Twice in his article, the President refers to tribal sovereignty, a fascinating concept in American law. [1] This principle of federal law has its roots in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, which states that “Congress shall have the power…To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.” These words, known as the Commerce Clause (the final five are generally referred to, in turn, as the Indian Commerce Clause), establish that Native Americans tribes represent some kind of “third entity” – they are not states or foreign nations. |
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