This according to the ever-reliable Scott Horton: Spanish prosecutors have decided to press forward with a criminal investigation targeting former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and five top associates over their role in the torture of five Spanish citizens held at Guantánamo, several reliable sources close to the investigation have told The Daily Beast. Their decision is expected to be announced...
Ed Whelan's latest post on Koh's nomination to be Legal Advisor lands a sharp and potentially serious blow. Reviewing Koh's writings and his testimony to the Senate in favor of Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, Whelan argues that Koh's testimony deliberately omitted discussion of important interpretations of CEDAW by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women: The...
There has been tons of commentary on the pirate thing now, so there is little more to add. Except that there is a brewing debate about where to try the remaining captured Somali pirate. In theory, the pirate could be tried before a military commission, if Obama wished, but I somehow doubt that his going to happen (although if he...
My professor in the Literature Program at Duke University, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, has passed away. Eve was one of the pioneering figures in queer theory. From Duke University Press's announcement: Duke University Press mourns the loss of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. We have been proud to publish six of Sedgwick’s books. The first, Tendencies (1992) is...
My thanks to Peter for his invaluable comments and to Opinio Juris and the Yale Journal of International Law for making this exchange possible. I am particularly grateful for Peter’s extraordinarily insightful critiques, which I think go a long way toward helping me develop the model that I propose in Protecting Rights Online. Peter’s first critique identifies one of the primary...
Let me begin by thanking Opinio Juris and the Yale International Law Journal for hosting this online symposium. In “Protecting Rights Online,” Professor Molly Beutz Land has written a highly interesting article that seeks to bridge the disciplinary and doctrinal divide between the human rights and access to knowledge (A2K) movements. The article is well-written, accessible and provocative. It has...
Although the human rights and access to knowledge (A2K) movements share many of the same goals, their legal and regulatory agendas in the area of Internet governance have historically had little in common. While state censorship online has been a principal concern for human rights advocates, this issue has not been a central focus of the A2K movement. Likewise, human...
Catherine Powell has an essay at Huffington Post responding to those criticizing Harold Koh for his views on customary international law. She writes: Harold Koh's position that customary international law is a form of federal common law reflects the conventional view since the founding of the nation. For over 200 years, Congress, the courts, and the Executive Branch have recognized that...
Pope Benedict XVI's Easter homily included this message of hope and reconciliation: If it is true that death no longer has power over man and over the world, there still remain very many, in fact too many signs of its former dominion. Even if through Easter, Christ has destroyed the root of evil, he still wants the assistance of...
Stuart Taylor, the eminent legal affairs columnist for National Journal, writes this week on the vexed issue of the detainee cases. This sentence in particular caught my eye: So clogged with detainee cases are the federal courts in D.C. that they may not have time to conduct any ordinary civil trials this spring or summer. Stuart is a very diligent journalist, so...
A big case from the U.S. District Court here in New York came down this week, and I was spending my time reading blog posts on Harold Koh. Where are my priorities? In an important test of the scope of the Alien Tort Statute's application to multinational corporations, Judge Shira Scheindlin has finally ruled on the defendant corporations' motion to...
Still more disappointment from Bush 44: The Obama administration said Friday that it would appeal a district court ruling that granted some military prisoners in Afghanistan the right to file lawsuits seeking their release. The decision signaled that the administration was not backing down in its effort to maintain the power to imprison terrorism suspects for extended periods without judicial oversight. In...
