In association with the International Commission of Jurists

May 2006

14 May

The tragic impacts of Yugoslavia’s dissolution linger on, as do efforts at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia to prosecute those accused of committing war crimes in furtherance of so-called ethnic interests, whether Serb, Muslim or Croat. But, the underlying tragedies aside, you’ve got to wonder about the BBC’s story today that Croatia’s football champions, Dinamo Zagreb,...

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13 May

Twenty-five years ago today, on May 13, 1981, an assassination attempt was made on the life of John Paul II. Days like today make me think of the counterfactual. Can you possibly imagine what the world would be like today without John Paul II? Peggy Noonan in her recent book, John Paul The Great, eloquently summarizes the...

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13 May

The U.S. is commonly denounced as stingy in economic development circles for failing to donate more foreign aid. Although the U.S. government spends about $19.7 billion a year in foreign aid, more than the next two countries combined, this amount is small relative to the size of U.S. GDP. One response to this criticism is to point to private U.S....

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12 May

The High Court in London ruled yesterday that the resettlement of native islanders from their homeland in the Indian Ocean was unlawful. The case of Bancoult v. Secretary of State is available here. The islands of the Chagos Archipelago are of no small significance to the United States and the United Kingdom. The United States leases the only inhabitable...

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11 May

It's occasionally interesting to run cite counts for the leading cases in their fields. Doing so can tell you where the action is - or at least, the action in federal courts. I don't teach or write in traditional foreign relations or public international law, however, so the cases I examined may not be a very complete set....

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11 May

I've spent the last week travelling in Egypt (Failed State Rank No. 31) taking in the sights and wandering for the past few days in the Western Desert (somehow, they survive there without internet access). Of course, during that short time, there have been violent clashes between the government and opposition protesters, the government claims to have killed the...

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11 May

There is an interesting global poll released by GlobeScan Incorporated that is quite revealing about the future of blogs. Here's the bad news: the public generally does not trust blogs. The poll showed that blogs are the least trusted news source compared to all other news media. The public trusts blogs less than radio, newspapers, television, and family and friends....

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11 May

A federal court in Washington D.C. ruled this week that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) applies to government conduct at Guantanomo Bay. The decision in Rasul v. Rumsfeld, (2006 WL 1216668) is not yet available online. The plaintiffs are detainees who allege various violations of RFRA, including harassment while worshipping, the shaving of their religious beards,...

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10 May

If anyone out there still believes that Iraq "reconstruction" is about something other than enriching the Republican party's corporate cronies, read this post, which explains how the White House and the Republican majority are making sure that new funds cannot be audited by the Special Inspector General for Iraqi Reconstruction, who had committed the most mortal of all sins in...

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