Excerpt:
The American Lawyer (January 2009) - On October 17 the International Court of Justice ordered Georgia and Russia to refrain from ethnic cleansing in Russian-occupied Abkhazia and South Ossetia while Georgia’s complaint against Russia is being heard. It was the first invocation of the 1965 U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination by the World Court, which usually concerns itself with mundane border disputes.
But it was not the first ICJ case that Foley Hoag’s Paul Reichler helped to bring against a present or former superpower. Reichler catapulted to fame in 1984 at age 36, when he launched a suit—on behalf of Nicaragua—against the United States for its paramilitary activities in Central America. As Reichler says, “I’m surely the only lawyer to have sued both the U.S. and Russia in the International Court of Justice.” And, he might have added, won. While the World Court enjoined violence on both sides in the Caucasus—and some observers blame Georgia for provoking the confrontation—Georgia sought the injunction, and it is Georgians who most need its protection. (continues...)
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