In the “blood diamond” case, former Liberian president Charles Taylor was sentenced to 50 years in prison. His was the first conviction of a head of state by an international tribunal since the Nuremberg trials that followed WWII. He was found guilty by the joint Sierra Leone and UN Special Court for Sierra Leone last month of 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The court is located in The Hague.

Taylor is 64, and if his entire sentence is carried out, he will likely spend the rest of his life in prison. The court is required to set a specific sentence; it cannot prescribe the death penalty or life imprisonment. Taylor is expected to appeal the sentence.

Justice Lussick who read the judgment in court noted that while Taylor’s convictions were for aiding and abetting the commission of crimes and that jurisprudence of the Special Court and related tribunals “holds that aiding and abetting as a mode of liability generally warrants a lesser sentence than that imposed for more direct forms of participation,” Taylor’s leadership role “puts him in a class of his own.” Two rebel commanders tried earlier were sentenced to 50 and 52 years respectively.

In their sentencing, the judges took in to account his good behavior while in detention, while apparently ignoring other mitigating factors proposed by the defense such as his age and health.

Liberia's former President Charles Taylor was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity Thursday by the Special Court for Sierra Leone. The court was formed in 2002 to address the UN Security Council’s “deep concern at the very serious crimes committed within the territory of Sierra Leone against the people of Sierra Leone and United Nations and associated personnel and at the prevailing situation of impunity.” The trial was held in The Hague because conducting the proceedings in Sierra Leone itself was deemed potentially too destabilizing for West Africa.

Taylor was found guilty on 11 counts, including murder, conscription of child soldiers, rape and sexual slavery. He was tried for supplying weapons to the brutal rebel group Revolutionary United Front (RUF) during Sierra Leone's bloody civil war, which ended in 2001. In return, the rebels supplied him with raw diamonds, so-called blood diamonds.

The court found Taylor guilty of "sustained and significant" support for the rebels who committed the various atrocities, although it found him not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of ordering those abuses himself. The trial lasted 5 years and a sentencing hearing is scheduled for late May where Taylor could face life imprisonment.

Taylor is the first African head of state to be tried in an international court and the first former head of state to have a judgment brought against him since the Nuremburg trials that followed WWII. But, another former African head of state, Laurent Gbagbo of Ivory Coast, is now awaiting trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is also located in The Hague.

Change is afoot at the World Bank. Jim Yong Kim was recently named as the next president of the bank effective in June. Kim is a physician with a doctorate in anthropology and his development experience includes addressing the problem of making HIV treatment available in the developing world.  Additionally, last week the World Bank announced its new Open Access policy, effective July 1, which formalizes its policy of making research and knowledge freely available online.

The new Open Access policy will be implemented in phases throughout the year. For the first phase, the World Bank just launched a new Open Knowledge Repository and adopted a set of Creative Commons copyright licenses.

Now anybody is free to use, re-use and redistribute most of the bank's knowledge products and research for commercial or non-commercial purposes. The policy will also apply to Bank research published with third party publishers including the institution’s two journals—World Bank Research Observer (WBRO) and World Bank Economic Review (WBER). The bank will respect publishing embargoes, but expects the amount of time it takes for externally published bank content to be included in its institutional repository to diminish over time.

While much of the bank’s research has been available for free on the World Bank website and other places, the Open Access policy marks a change in how that information is accessed. The Open Knowledge Repository will now be the new home for all World Bank research. It currently contains works from 2009-2012. It will be updated regularly and coverage will be expanded both backwards and forwards.

Transcripts & audio of the March 28, 2012, hearing on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Medicaid/state coercion issue) have been posted on the Supreme Court's website:

Transcript: http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/11-400.pdf

Audio: http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_audio_detail.aspx?argument=11-400

Transcripts & audio of the March 28, 2012, hearing on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (severability issue) have been posted on the Supreme Court's website:

Transcript: http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/11-393.pdf

Audio: http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_audio_detail.aspx?argument=11-393

Transcripts & audio of the March 27, 2012, hearing on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act have been posted on the Supreme Court's website:

Transcript: http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/11-398-Tuesday.pdf

Audio: http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_audio_detail.aspx?argument=11-398-Tuesday

Transcripts & audio of the March 26, 2012, hearing on the applicability of the Anti-Injunction Act to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act have been posted on the Supreme Court's website:

Transcript: http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/11-398-Monday.pdf

Audio: http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_audio_detail.aspx?argument=11-398-Monday

Today's argument at the US Supreme Court on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act concerns whether the "penalty" assessed under 26 U.S.C. §5000A against individuals who do not meet the minimum coverage provisions is a "tax" for the purposes of the Anti-Injunction Act.

The Anti-Injunction Act (26 U.S.C. §7421) provides that "Except as provided in sections 6015(e), 6212(a) and (c), 6213(a), 6225(b), 6246(b), 6330(e)(1), 6331(i), 6672(c), 6694(c), 7426(a) and (b)(1), 7429(b), and 7436, no suit for the purpose of restraining the assessment or collection of any tax shall be maintained in any court by any person, whether or not such person is the person against whom such tax was assessed." In other words, an individual cannot bring a suit to enjoin the Government from collecting or assessing a tax, and must instead wait until that tax is assessed against him.

This first day of argument, accordingly, is to determine whether or not the Supreme Court even has jurisdiction to hear this case --- inasmuch as the "penalty" arising under the PPACA does not even take effect until 2014, if the "penalty" is a "tax", the Anti-Injunction Act would apply. Only individuals who have actually been assessed the "penalty" could bring a suit, and only then after they have met the administrative procedures required for any tax litigation.

An example of a nominal "penalty" that is considered to be a "tax" for the purposes of the Anti-Injunction Act is the Trust Fund Recovery Penalty that arises under 26 U.S.C. §6672. See, e.g., Kelly v. Lethert, 362 F.2d 629 (8th Cir. 1966).

The merit and amicus briefs on the Anti-Injunction Act are available at http://www.americanbar.org/publications/preview_home/11-398_Anti-InjuntionAct.html.

For more information about the Anti-Injunction Act, and tax collection generally, please refer to William D. Elliott, Federal Tax Collections, Liens, and Levies, (2d ed. 1995), available in print in the Library (KF6313 .E45 1995) and on Westlaw (WGL-COLLECT).

Three days of Supreme Court arguments on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act begin on March 26, 2012.

Copies of the briefs are available from the Supreme Court's website at http://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/PPAACA.aspx.

Transcripts of the hearings will be available at the end of each day at http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts.aspx.

On Friday, March 30, audio recordings of the hearings should be available at http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_audio.aspx. It is possible, due to the public interest in these cases, that the audio recordings may be posted earlier. 

The inaugural 2012 issue of the Georgetown Law Center, Business, Economics & Regulatory Law Research Paper Series (Vol. 14, Issue No. 1) has just been just been released by SSRN.

This issue includes the following new works of scholarship from Georgetown Law faculty:

• The WHO Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel: The Evolution of Global Health Diplomacy by Allyn L. Taylor and Ibadat S. Dhillon (Realizing Rights)
• Looking at the Lanham Act: Images in Trademark and Advertising Law by Rebecca Tushnet
• The Dodd-Frank Act and Housing Finance: Can It Restore Private Risk Capital to the Securitization Market? by Adam J. Levitin, Andrey D. Pavlov (Simon Fraser University) and Susan M. Wachter (University of Pennsylvania)

Registered SSRN users can subscribe to this series for free.

Recent faculty publications and working papers are also available via the Georgetown Law Scholarly Commons.  The Georgetown Law Center’s SSRN series and the Scholarly Commons are administered by the Georgetown Law Library.