Yeah, this is much better: On Sunday, Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said on the ABC News program “This Week” that “those who devised policy” also “should not be prosecuted.” But administration officials said Monday that Mr. Emanuel had meant the officials who ordered the policies carried out, not the lawyers who provided the legal rationale. I'm dubious that...
Eric Posner picks up on Marko Milanovic's very interesting comments in response to my question below about the views of non American international lawyers of the ATS. I'm going to pull up interesting responses to my question into this separate post - currently from Marko, Francisco Forrest Martin, and I'll update if others add things to the bottom of the...
Still holding out hope that the Obama administration will prosecute the architects of the torture regime? Stop: The Obama administration opposes any effort to prosecute those in the Justice Department who drafted legal memos authorizing harsh interrogations at secret CIA prisons, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said yesterday. Some analysts and lawmakers have called for investigations and possible prosecution of...
Words of wisdom from Tommy Crocker at The Faculty Lounge: Comments today by Gen. Michael Hayden make clear a further reason why the Obama Administration should name a special prosecutor to investigate potential war crimes in light of everything we know, and have recently learned, about CIA interrogations of "high value al Qaeda detainees." Gen. Hayden has played a vocal role...
Just in case you hadn't had enough of the Koh discussions, here are Stuart Taylor and Evan Thomas in Newsweek. I am in broad agreement with this assessment, for whatever that is worth. I also broadly agree with Jonathan Adler's assessment over at Volokh (below). There, I've said all I want to say in the Koh wars. Well, not quite. Of...
I am fundamentally in agreement with the Bradley-Goldsmith view that Julian and Kevin discuss in the two previous posts. However, I want to post up a related question. It is not so much about the ATS itself or its implications for US law or its politics. It is, rather, about the substance of the legal positions produced in ATS cases...
Curtis Bradley and Jack Goldsmith have a new op-ed taking aim at the latest decision in the ongoing Alien Tort Statute case involving U.S. corporations who did business during South Africa apartheid era. In fact, they take issue with the whole wave of ATS litigation attempting to hold corporations liable under aiding and abetting liability, using the South Africa case...
In today's Washington Post, Curtis Bradley and Jack Goldsmith have an editorial attacking the recent refusal of a federal judge to grant a motion to dismiss in Khulumani v. Barclays National Bank Ltd, the ATS lawsuit brought by victims of apartheid against 23 corporations who did business with the South African government during the apartheid era. It's a remarkably unpersuasive...
More evidence that the CIA interrogators did not rely in good faith on the OLC memos: Bradbury's 30 May 2005 memo acknowledges (p. 37) that the CIA Inspector General's report found that the CIA waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times in March 2003 and Abu Zubaydah 83 times in August 2002. That regime far surpasses the CIA's own internal guidelines...
As we all know, the ICC does not have jurisdiction over the acts of torture committed by the CIA at Guantanamo Bay -- neither the US nor Cuba is a member of the Court. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that it would be far easier to prosecute the CIA interrogators at the ICC than in the US, because there is...
I'm not particularly surprised, but I'm still disappointed. Israel's ostensible justification is that the UNHRC resolution that created the fact-finding mission is biased, because it only asked Goldstone to investigate Israeli war crimes. That was a ridiculous move on the UNHRC's part, to be sure -- but one of the very first things Goldstone did was to make...
I am grateful to Mr. Li and Professor Wang for their thoughtful comments and am flattered by their praise. The very fact that a lawyer and a law professor speak of their criminal justice system with such insight and candor highlights one of the most laudatory aspects of Taiwan’s legal reform project: A transparent, open debate over the best path...
