The day approaches when everyone will have their own drone. I think I'd like this a Christmas present. Behold the Parrot.AR ipod-itouch-ipad controlled drone - available for pre-order at Amazon, coming out later this year. [caption id="attachment_13277" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="The Parrot Drone"][/caption]...
Following on Kevin and Ben's exchanges on the targeted killing and American citizen discussion - and the ACLU/CCR lawsuit, opinion pieces and editorial in the Washington Post - I've put up something at Volokh on this. It's not my final thought on the subject by any means, but I'm under deadline for something else. I'm not going to cross-post it...
Ben Wittes calls attention today to a Washington Post editorial defending the targeted killing of American citizens like Al-Aulaqi: [W]hen a target is hiding in a lawless state or in one which refuses to cooperate in his apprehension, other alternatives must be considered, including targeted strikes. The decision to target an American must be a last resort, used...
Via BLDGBLOG and Pruned (1, 2), here are two suggestions that are not so much literal proposals but rather thought experiments, each meant to prod the viewer. (And a third one from me.) The first is one of the winners of SeaChange 2030+, an "ideas competition" sponsored by the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects with the goal of addressing the effects of...
Julian noted a couple of days ago that the ACLU and Center for Constitutional Rights have challenged the Obama administration's "asserted authority to carry out ‘targeted killings’ of U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism far from any field of armed conflict.” The lawsuit claims, inter alia, that such killings violate the due-process rights of the targeted citizens. As Anthony Romero...
Matt Armstrong, who blogs at MountainRunner, has an article in the current World Politics Review called Reforming Smith-Mundt: Making American Public Diplomacy Safe for Americans. While the full version is only available online for a fee, there is a brief excerpt on the WPR website: American public diplomacy has been the subject of many reports and much discussion over the past few...
Bobby Chesney, Jack Goldsmith, and Ben Wittes have started a new blog, Lawfare: Hard National Security Choices. Here's how Ben Wittes describes it in the opening post: We mean to devote this blog to that nebulous zone in which actions taken or contemplated to protect the nation interact with the nation’s laws and legal institutions. We will, I am sure, construe...
The movement for a global currency tax gains momentum. PARIS, Sept 1 (Reuters) - A group of 60 nations, including France, Britain and Japan, will propose at the U.N. this month that a tax be introduced on international currency transactions to raise funds for development aid, ministers said on Wednesday. Speaking after a meeting in Paris, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said...
Could anyone point me to a link giving a basic, plain language discussion of the difference between forum and jurisdiction in American law? Something that I could use with a group of non-US lawyers - clear, not too long, basic distinctions? Thanks....
Over at Volokh Conspiracy, I have some purely political comments - ie, criticism from a conservative stance - of President Obama's speech last night. I'm not cross-posting it here because it doesn't really have a link to international law as such, but perhaps some readers might be interested....
Last spring I spoke at a Pepperdine torts conference addressing the globalization of tort law. Lots of famous torts scholars in the room, including my former classmate at NYU, Harvard Professor Jonathan Goldberg. I was the only international law guy in the crowd, which actually worked to my advantage given the topic. I chose for my topic...
Our friends at the University of Goettingen in Germany have recently published another issue of the Goettingen Journal of International Law. The latest issue contains lots of great stuff, including a series of articles focused on the recently concluded ICC Review Conference in Kampala (Talk about fast work!). GoJIL, which is structured similarly to a U.S. law review, is still a new experiment...
