May 2010

I will write in more detail when I have a bit more time, but I can't let Dershowitz's ridiculously slanted and ahistorical attack on Richard Goldstone pass without comment.  Sasha Polakow-Suransky, a Senior Editor at Foreign Affairs who is an expert on Israel-South Africa relations, has responded to the allegations made in the Yediot Ahronoth story Dershowitz cites, allegations that...

Alan Dershowitz has never been shy to express his views, but I think he may be going a bit far here in reaction to recent stories about Judge Richard Goldstone's service to the Apartheid regime in South Africa. Goldstone was--quite literally--a hanging judge. He imposed and affirmed death sentences for more than two dozen blacks under circumstances where whites would almost...

The New York Times is reporting that Moreno-Ocampo has offered Spain's Judge Garzon a temporary position as one of his advisors: Spain’s well-known investigating magistrate, Baltasar Garzón who is being prosecuted in a case filed by far-right Spanish groups, has been offered a temporary post as an external adviser to the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in...

Roger blogged below about how Kagan called in 1995 for substantive questioning of Supreme Court nominees.  Just in time to avoid being asked such questions herself, she's changed her mind: The White House Monday said that Supreme Court nominee won’t follow her own advice from 1995 in answering questions on specific legal cases or issues, supporting Kagan’s flip flop...

It doesn't look like she's written anything even remotely related to international law (it is surprising how little she's written on anything, for an academic). On the now-standard question of what role IL should have in constitutional interpretation, we have this out-on-a-limb answer from her confirmation as Solicitor General: I do not believe that international law (assuming it has not been incorporated...

In 1995, while Elena Kagan was an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, she wrote a review about Stephen Carter’s book, The Confirmation Mess. Carter’s book, of course, was highly critical of the confirmation process and identified numerous ailments, including most famously, the handling of the confirmation hearing of Robert Bork. Kagan begs to differ....

There's hypocrisy, and then there's Omar al-Bashir: Sudan's justice minister has asked Interpol to arrest the leader of Darfur's most powerful rebel group, state media said on Monday, a step likely to dash hopes of progress in a faltering peace process. [snip] The Sudanese Media Centre quoted Abdel Basit Sabderat as saying the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) leader,...

I wanted to point our readers to a terrific discussion at EJIL Talk! on our own Ken Anderson's recent article "The Rise of International Criminal Law: Intended and Unintended Consequences".  Ken's article "offers a high-altitude, high-speed look at the effects of international criminal law on other parts of public international law and organizations."  EJIL Talk! has solicited two very interesting...

Is there anything new or useful to say about "International Law and the Israeli-Arab Dispute"?  Well, a number of scholars (including Ken, Roger, and myself) will try to come up with something next Monday, May 17, during a conference at Northwestern University School of Law.  This is one of the few subjects intersecting international law where there is way too...