State Department Legal Adviser nominee Harold Koh's written answers to pre-hearing questions asked by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have been posted online at Senator Lugar's site. The Q&A goes for over 60 pages. I have only skimmed it and so, for now, I will simply point out questions/answers that may be of particular interest to Opinio Juris readers (and of course, I...
And proves he is neither very funny nor even remotely interested in anything resembling intelligent debate: Hypothesize that the Obama administration, or perhaps foreign/international courts, prosecute and convict various officials of the Bush administration. Further assume that the new President who takes office in 2013 or 2017 has promised "I will ensure that the crimes of the previous administration are vigorously...
Harold Koh, who is moderating the last Reisman panel on human rights, asks the panel about the legal status of human rights committees like the CEDAW committee, obliquely referring to a controversy over the legal status of such committees' interpretive authority. Hmm...
I, along with an impressive group of legal scholars from around the world, have gathered in New Haven to celebrate the career and scholarship of Yale Law Professor W. Michael Reisman. So, a wonderful opportunity to blog! But I forgot to bring my laptop, so all I have is my lousy iPhone. Still, I will try to share a few...
Interesting item from The Economist here. It is becoming increasingly clear that any important international process or institution is going to be held to transparency norms. And where there is power, there must also be accountability. In the dispute resolution context, that takes the form of NGO participation. Why shouldn't NGOs be able to participate in proceedings with public policy...
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court decided Iran v. Elahi, a case that appears to fall within a data set of one. As I reported earlier, the case is extraordinarily complex, focusing on whether a terrorist victim judgment creditor can attach a confirmed arbitration award rendered in Iran’s favor. Although it involves exotic issues relating to international terrorism, military...
Scholars who believe that the individuals who wrote the OLC memos authorizing torture should be criminally prosecuted -- as I do -- normally cite the Justice Case, decided by the Nuremberg Military Tribunal (NMT) in 1947, for the proposition that a government lawyer can be held criminally responsible for giving erroneous legal advice to his political superiors. Last year, I...
U.S. prosecutors charged the sole surviving Somali pirate from the Maersk Alabama incident, Abduwali Muse, yesterday on charges of piracy, conspiracy to seize a ship by force, discharging a firearm during a ship seizure, conspiracy to commit hostage-taking and brandishing a firearm during a hostage taking. The list of reported charges seems to confirm Eugene Kontorovich's suggestion yesterday in a great post over at...
Professor Ron Slye has a helpful defense of the Koh nomination up at Foreign Policy. His post includes this very useful description of "transnational legal process" noting, importantly, that TLP is a descriptive theory of how law crosses borders. Somehow this fact has eluded much of the MSM discussion: All transnationalism does, in a nutshell, is work to describe and understand...
[Major John C. Dehn is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Law, US Military Academy, West Point, NY. He teaches International Law, and Constitutional and Military Law. He is writing in his personal capacity and his views do not necessarily represent the views of the Department of Defense, the US Army, or the US Military Academy.] First, I express my thanks...
The WSJ Editorial Page takes UN Ambassador Susan Rice to task for claiming that the recent UN Security Council "presidential statement" is legally binding on North Korea. Here is Rice's full statement on this point, I believe. Reporter: Ambassador, there seems to be some debate as to whether there’s any legally binding items in this presidential statement. We talked to one...
TNR discusses here the circumstances of last Friday's intervention by Palestinian doctor Ashraf El Hagog as a representative of UN Watch. The Chair of the then-Prep Com, who has since been elected chair of the Durban II conference, is Najjat al-Hajjaji, representing the government of Libya. Readers might recall that Hagog, along with a group of Bulgarian nurses was...
