In association with the International Commission of Jurists

April 2009

17 Apr

[Jaw-perng Wang is Professor of Law at National Taiwan University] I am very impressed that a foreign scholar, especially a common-law trained one, could have a precise picture of Taiwan’s criminal procedure and its history and recent reforms.  Without spending tremendous time and effort, an article that accurately and meticulously reports Taiwan’s criminal procedure, like this one, could not possibly be...

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17 Apr

[Nigel Li is a prominent lawyer and legal scholar in Taiwan] Professor Lewis' article comes timely as a 10-year review of the half-baked criminal procedure reforms in Taiwan, particularly in a vacuum of rigorous academic attention to an ambitious attempt to transplant the common-law adversarial system to a soil of civil-law inquisitorial adjudication by a rising young democracy seeking a new...

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16 Apr

I argued below that "good faith reliance" on OLC opinions does not justify promising CIA interrogators that they will not be prosecuted for their criminal acts.  With regard to waterboarding, it is important to note that it seems clear some of the interrogators cannot even argue good faith reliance.  Consider the following footnote from Bradbury's May 10, 2005, memo, discussing...

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16 Apr

I mentioned a couple of days ago that the case against the Bush Six was likely to go forward.  Unfortunately, rumors of the case's survival turn out to be somewhat exaggerated: Spain's attorney general said he'll seek dismissal of an investigation of Bush administration officials for alleged torture of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prisoners. Attorney General Candido Conde-Pumpido said Thursday the claim against...

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16 Apr

I very much appreciate the thoughtful commentary of Professors J.B. Ruhl and Nathan Sayre on my article.  They are engaged in tremendously interesting thinking on questions of environmental scale and governance, and I find their comments insightful.  I agree with both of them that this article opens further research questions about what diagonals are, how they have been constituted over...

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16 Apr

[Nathan Sayre is Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of California at Berkeley] I join J.B. Ruhl in applauding Hari Osofsky’s effort to bring geographical and legal scholarship into a constructive dialogue to address climate change. Her analysis draws important empirical and theoretical lessons from two case studies by illuminating the complex role of litigation in driving...

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16 Apr

[J.B. Ruhl is Matthews & Hawkins Professor of Property at Florida State University College of Law] By asking us to think diagonally about institutional frameworks for formulating and implementing responses to climate change, Professor Hari Osofsky challenges law and policy to confront the reality of climate change as a hugely complex multi-scalar phenomenon. The conventional wisdom has been that climate change,...

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15 Apr

As with the earlier comments by Ed Swaine, I greatly appreciate Michael Ramsey’s astute observations regarding how political commitments fit into the constitutional discourse. I've endeavored to provide my initial responses to each of his suggestions below, although surely Duncan and I will build from his comments as we develop our theories going forward. We are pleased that Professor Ramsey agrees...

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