In association with the International Commission of Jurists

January 2009

21 Jan

The Cable has a short post on Dean Anne-Marie Slaughter taking a leave from Princeton to become the head of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff (a post previously held by George Kennan, Paul Nitze and, more recently, by Tony Lake, Dennis Ross, Richard Haass, and Stephen Krasner). Anne-Marie, as many readers of this blog would know, is a prominent international...

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21 Jan

One other added benefit of the upcoming Obama years (and there are likely to be few)  is the end of the dishonest or at least inaccurate charges about the radical nature of the Bush Administration's views on executive powers.  The most annoying one that I've heard a million times from Keith Olbermann but also from otherwise intelligent and respectable constitutional...

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21 Jan

No "citizen of the world" talk today.  I was a little surprised at the fairly pronounced us/them premise of the speech, a worldview still defined by states.  And no nods to international institutions, even as a general proposition.  Of course Obama is the President of the United States (and most Americans certainly expect the national framing), but if I were...

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21 Jan

I admit I am not exactly looking forward to the Obama years. Still, it did warm my heart a bit to hear the new U.S. commander-in-chief endorse the continuation of the war on terrorism in his inaugural speech yesterday.   That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network...

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20 Jan

Great inauguration speech by President Obama. In terms of foreign policy here are my quick thoughts. First, the speech was striking for President Obama's appeal to soft power. "Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us,...

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20 Jan

The Obama Administration has taken over the White House, and with it the www.whitehouse.gov website.  Consistent with the earlier campaign's internet-focus, visitors will find a front-page link to a new blog, The White House Blog.  Macon Phillips, the Director of New Media for the White House, already has a post up, Change has come to WhiteHouse.Gov, which introduces the new blog...

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19 Jan

There is a lively debate going on in the blogosphere about the legal impact of Eric Holder's statement that waterboarding is torture and Susan Crawford's conclusion that Mohammed al-Qahtani was tortured while in custody at Guantanamo Bay.  Does Holder's statement and Crawford's conclusion require the US to prosecute the interrogators who used waterboarding and the Bush administration officials who approved...

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16 Jan

Barclays Bank v. Franchise Tax Board (1994) was a case that some of us (those who started teaching in the mid 90s) saw as a breakthrough case on foreign relations federalism, a sharp turn from Zschernig and the 'one voice' line of foreign commerce clause cases. As Jack Goldsmith wrote in 1999, for instance, "Barclays Bank marks a return to...

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16 Jan

Regular readers no doubt know that I am obsessed with the media's seemingly congenital inability to grasp the law and politics of the ICC.  My new favorite comes via the BBC, in an article about the impending arrest warrant for Bashir: Two Sudanese groups have formally requested the International Criminal Court (ICC) not to issue an arrest for President Omar al-Bashir. He...

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16 Jan

ICC silliness doesn't just affect the media.  States and NGOs suffer the malady, as well.  Case in point: the recent, repeated calls for the ICC to prosecute Israel for war crimes allegedly committed in Gaza. First up, Bolivia: "The Andean state says it is intended to make regional allies take a unified stance against "the Israeli political and military leaders responsible...

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16 Jan

It’s an absurd question, of course, to ask why the environment is more important than human rights. But it’s actually true: protecting, say, endangered sea turtles is far more important than protecting against cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of individuals. At least that is the conclusion if one is examining the question from an international trade perspective. The...

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