In association with the International Commission of Jurists

November 2011

10 Nov

For those in NYC tomorrow, I wanted to note that NYU Law is hosting what promises to be an informative experts' meeting tomorrow on the International Criminal Court.  Here's the event description: How best to assure the independence of the ICC Prosecutor Friday, Nov. 11th from 6-7:30 p.m. NYU School of Law,  Lipton Hall, Faculty Club, 108 West 3rd Street, New York, New York The independence...

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10 Nov

[Robert E. Williams, Jr. is an associate professor of political science at Pepperdine University and an expert on corruption in Equatorial Guinea]. The other shoe has dropped in the U.S. Government’s corruption case against Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue. Last week, a civil forfeiture complaint was unsealed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California as a second...

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10 Nov

Here is a story that no one (here in the U.S. anyway) is paying attention to: Russia’s accession to the WTO cleared a major hurdle when the WTO Working Party on its accession approved, ad referendum on 10 November 2011, the package spelling out Russia’s terms of entry to the organization. The Working Party will now send its accession recommendation to...

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10 Nov

The Naval War College has published the latest volume in its Blue Book series.  Here is the description and information about how to obtain it (although you can simply get the PDF here): The Naval War College International Law Department recently published volume 87 of its International Law Studies "Blue Book"  series.  The Blue Book has served as...

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07 Nov

Congratulations to Kal Raustiala and Laura Dickinson, the masterminds who conceived and carried out the first Research Forum sponsored by the American Society of International Law.  The forum took place this past weekend in Los Angeles, together with the ASIL Mid-Year Meeting, which ASIL President David Caron has successfully moved out of Washington and out among broader constituencies of international...

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07 Nov

Robert Reinstein is Clifford Scott Green Professor of Law at Temple University Law School and the author of Executive Power and the Law of Nations in the Washington Administration, which addresses the early history of the recognition power. M.B.Z. v. Clinton is the first case in which there is an apparent conflict between an act of Congress and the President’s authority...

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07 Nov

That was the candid assessment of outgoing ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo at the recent ASIL Midyear meeting held at UCLA this past weekend. In a free-flowing and unusually frank discussion of the International Criminal Court to a packed assembly, Moreno-Ocampo admitted that there is "one standard for 119 member states, and another standard for every other country." He...

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07 Nov

Once I again I want to extend our thanks to all of the discussants of my book on both EJIL: Talk! and Opinio Juris. In addition to my introduction, readers can find at the specified links the contributions of Michael Marrus, Alexa Stiller, and Rob Cryer with my reply on EJIL: Talk!, and those of Dave Glazier, Detlev Vagts, Roger...

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07 Nov

Tonight's episode of The Good Wife featured a Muslim-American man -- a former Army translator in Afghanistan -- who sues the U.S. government for torture and ends up being accused of supporting al-Qaeda.  It was quite a fascinating episode; it's not everyday that a mainstream television show is built around Executive Order 13324, which blocks property and prohibits transactions with...

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04 Nov

My thanks to Dave Glazier, Detlev Vagts, Roger Clark, and Devin Pendas for their insightful comments on my book.  At the risk of sounding like I’ve plagiarized my response at EJIL: Talk!, I find it difficult to respond to those comments, because I almost completely agree with them.  But I’ll give it a shot… Glazier My basic response to...

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04 Nov

Adam Entous, Siobhan Gorman, and Julian Barnes of the Wall Street Journal’s national security reporting team have a front page article today detailing the inside debates and, as the article says, policy changes around drone strikes in Pakistan over the several months.  It is a must-read for everyone who follows drone and targeted killing policy debates, and, I’m told, reflects months of reporting.  It is not a “here-is-the-leaked-document” kind of article, but instead a synthesis of many sources and an attempt to put together an account of months of debate and policy back-and-forth over how, when, who, and with whose permission to launch drone strikes in Pakistan’s territory.  
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