How much of a disaster is the Iraq War? If the editors of Foreign Policy are correct, a major one. Here, according to the magazine's most recent cover story, are the top 10 "winners" in Iraq: 1. Iran 2. Moqtada al-Sadr 3. Al-Qaeda 4. Samuel Huntington (for his "clash of civilizations" thesis) 5. China 6. Arab Dictators 7. The Price of Oil (and not from...
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has dismissed a habeas petition by a number of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, holding that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 deprives federal courts of jurisdiction over these detainees' cases. (The opinion is uploaded here). The majority also finds that there is no Suspension Clause problem in the...
There is a fascinating case brewing at ICSID concerning new laws established by the South African government to redress historical, social, and economic inequalities in the mining and energy sectors. Luke Peterson of Investment Treaty News has the details: European-based investors in South Africa's mining industry have mounted an international arbitration against the South African Government alleging that that country's...
Duke Law School hosted a workshop last week with a great line-up on the Law and Politics of International Delegation. Papers are available here. ...
Today is the anniversary of a shameful event in US history: the 1942 signing of Executive Order 9066, authorizing the internment of German-, Italian- and Japanese-Americans during World War II. Two House Representatives from California, Xavier Becerra and Dan Lundgren are today introducing a bill in Congress to bring attention and some small amount of justice to the...
1948 is a new international law blog from Otto Spijkers and Richard Norman. It is based out of the University of Leiden. Why is the blog called 1948? I 'll let them explain:1948 was a leap year, beginning on a Thursday. More importantly, 1948 saw the creation of the Organization of American States, the Berlin Blockade and the beginnings...
Last week, the Southern District of New York offered up a nice, succinct, high quality opinion on treaty interpretation that does a wonderful job of looking at plain meaning, object and purpose to interpret an ambiguous phrase in the Montreal Convention. There is nothing exciting about Baah v. Virgin Atlantic Airways (2007 WL 424993)--it related to injuries suffered from hot beverages...
As the BBC reports, "a meeting in Washington of global political leaders has reached a new agreement on tackling climate change." The meeting included representatives from the key non-Kyoto Treaty countries, the U.S. and China. So have we finally reached a breakthrough on global climate change policy? Nope. At least not yet. The meeting in Washington D.C....
The role of reputation in international law and international relations is incredibly hard to quantify. Among assertive unilateralists in the US, it is often argued that dents to American reputation that result, for example, from deviations from well-established international human rights standards, are outweighed by the need for other states to deal with the U.S. Internationalists, on the other hand,...
Last week the D.C. Circuit rendered an alarming decision ruling that multinational forces in Iraq could not transfer an American citizen held in Iraq to an Iraqi court for criminal prosecution for alleged terrorist activities he committed while in Iraq. In Omar v. Harvey, an American-Jordanian dual national was arrested in Baghdad in October 2004, together with four other...
Like Roger, I have been intrigued (and somewhat disturbed) by the effect of television on student perceptions of torture. One of my students recently responded to an argument that torture is ineffective with a reference to "24," a program in which, apparently, torture is routinely applied with effective results. I have never seen the program myself, but found Jane...
Human Rights First has launched an initiative known as Prime Time Torture that seeks to address the issue of torture on television. It laments the fact that "it used to be that only villains on television tortured. Today, 'good guy' and heroic American characters torture — and this torture is depicted as necessary, effective and even patriotic." I...
