In association with the International Commission of Jurists

June 2008

26 Jun

No surprise, the Supreme Court in the Second Amendment case of D.C. v. Heller refrains from any discussion of contemporary foreign or international laws or practices. The Court, per Justice Scalia, does discuss historical comparativism at some length (pp. 19-22), and Justice Stevens in dissent challenges this historical reading (pp. 27-31). But the really interesting part of Heller regarding comparativism...

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25 Jun

WorldPublicOpinion.org has released an interesting survey of world attitudes toward torture. Here is the summary of their findings:A WorldPublicOpinion.org poll of 19 nations finds that in 14 of them most people favor an unequivocal rule against torture, even in the case of terrorists who have information that could save innocent lives. Four nations lean toward favoring an exception in...

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25 Jun

Susan Franck forwards the following call for papers for what looks to be an interesting and well-timed conference:The ASIL's International Economic Law Interest Group will hold its biennial conference in Washington this year just after the U.S. Presidential election, on the timely theme of "The Politics of International Economic Law: The Next Four Years." The conference committee has just...

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25 Jun

As Julian notes the Court in Kennedy v. Louisiana ruled that the death penalty for child rape violated the Eighth Amendment. It did so without any reference to international or comparative law or experiences. The focus of the opinion was on a national consensus and the Court's own independent judgment of what the Eighth Amendment requires. Having...

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24 Jun

A recent op-ed published in the New York Times suggested that the states of the United States should do just that. Thomas W. Evans, who had been an adviser to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, argued that OPEC's actions violate U.S. antitrust law and artificially raises the prise of gasoline. However, he noted that the act of...

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24 Jun

No, Virginia, being unanimously acquitted by an international tribunal's trial and appeals chambers doesn't mean very much:Belgium has confirmed that it was investigating Emmanuel Bagambiki, former Governor of Cyangugu during the 1994 genocide, who was acquitted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and who is sought by Rwanda, reports Hirondelle Agency . "The federal prosecutor is looking at the...

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24 Jun

The folks at Pew Research have just released a poll highlighting just how popular Barack Obama is in the rest of the world. People around the world who have been paying attention to the American election express more confidence in Barack Obama than in John McCain to do the right thing regarding world affairs. McCain is rated lower than...

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23 Jun

Courtesy of Toast.com, the quiz consists of 30 questions -- 20 drawn from the U.S. citizenship test and 10 harder "curveballs." 24 is considered the minimum passing score; I scored, much to my delight, a 26. Can you do better? Hat-Tip: Americablog. ...

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23 Jun

I have a guest post up over at IntLawGrrls, discussing my recent symposium essay on Medellin. The post is here (with thanks to Diane Amann) and the essay is up on SSRN here. Here's the precis: Analysis of Medellín is likely to fall into one of the three narratives to have emerged from the arguments of the parties, the...

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