Adam has kindly allowed me to post his response -- which first appeared at Making Sense of Darfur -- to my criticism of his claim that domestic trials or a TRC would likely have been better than the IMT. Here it is, in full: Neither truth commissions nor domestic trials are as black and white as Professor Heller’s critique of my...
As usual, Laura Rozen (now at Politico) is on top of the latest international law news at Foggy Bottom. Columbia Law Professor Sarah Cleveland has been appointed Counselor on International Law in the office of State Department Legal Advisor Harold Koh. According to an email circulated by the school's dean announcing the appointment, Cleveland will "help develop the State Department's...
At the risk of being told again that I am writing in “literary Klingon,” I want to return to the issue of virtual worlds and their real world implications. This time, a virtual world is being considered as a way to assist in the management of an international organization, namely NATO. According to Danger Room: NATO’s got a new plan for training...
Orin Kerr has an interesting post at Volokh noting a story reporting that NSA intercepts were used in the just announced conviction in the UK of terrorists in the liquid-mixing-chemicals case. Orin is right in saying the story deserves more notice than it will probably get. I found it particularly interesting that apparently a reason why the NSA finally signed...
I have been ignoring the latest salvos in David Bernstein's lonely war against Human Rights Watch, because they have not purported to be anything other than character assassination. But his latest effort to discredit Marc Garlasco, HRW's Senior Military Analyst, is so beyond the pale of acceptable discourse that something needs to be said. Here are the relevant paragraphs of...
The Ninth Circuit last week argued that it did not have personal jurisdiction over DaimlerChrysler Corporation AG because it did not have continuous and systematic contacts with the forum. The case of Bauman v. DaimlerChrysler AG arose out of the alleged kidnapping, detention and torture of Argentinian citizens in Argentina by Argentinian state security forces acting at the direction...
The following post was written by my friend Mark Osiel (Iowa). He hopes that readers will provide him feedback on the post, so don't be shy! Also make sure to check out Mark's new book, "The End of Reciprocity: Terror, Torture, and the Law of War." It's superb. A curious feature of all the major international crimes is that, unlike domestic...
[caption id="attachment_9642" align="alignright" width="137" caption=""][/caption] So what resulted from the past few days of G-20 meetings of finance ministers? And, particularly given the long-term conversation here at OJ about transnational networks and global governance, do the meetings offer any data point in that discussion? The principal policy debates at the G-20 meetings were over bonus/compensation issues for bankers (pressed hard by the...
Rachel Irwin of IWPR has published a typically excellent article on the role of victims in Lubanga. (The article quotes me liberally, though, so you shouldn't take my word for that.) A taste: A total of 99 victims represented by seven lawyers are participating in the Lubanga trial at the International Criminal Court, ICC. The lawyers are present in the courtroom...
It's not unusual, I gather (never having worked in government), for the CIA to ask DOJ prosecutors to investigate leaks involving the agency. However, in the circumstances surrounding the current AG Holder decision to appoint a prosecutor to investigate CIA activities, it's perhaps worth noting that the CIA has asked for an investigation into what it apparently regards as a...
Over at Volokh, Michael Scharf and Jonathan Adler each weigh in. Plus, see the comments to the various posts here at OJ, as well as Peggy's earlier post on this subject at Prawfslawsblog. And Julian's earlier Prawfslawblog post, too. (Most of the discussion, though not all, is more narrowly focused on the question of 1L international law courses.)...
As Ken noted, Eric Posner has responded to my question on whether 1Ls should take international law with an emphatic "No!" In fact (and perhaps not surprisingly given his scholarly positions) Eric's not very keen on law students taking international law courses at all; he advises them to take statistics instead. Eric does concede that international law belongs in the...
