For those of you who are interested in doing primary source research in international law, a great (relatively) new online resource is the Electronic Information System in International Law or "EISIL". A project of the American Society of International Law, EISIL acts as a central clearinghouse of key treaties across a broad spectrum of topics in public and private...
Mirror of Justice has an interesting post on an essay in the Human Rights Watch's 2005 World Report on the "growing conflicts between religious communities and the human rights movement." The HRW essay on religion and human rights can be found here. Following is an excerpt (footnotes omitted) from the Preface of the Human Rights Watch essay entitled "Religion and the...
Another blog you might want to check out is The TransAtlantic Assembly, a blog hosted by U.S. and European lawyers and academics on issues of international law, transnational law, and EU law. Recent posts have considered EU enlargement, the torture memos in the U.S., and a dispute over public and private morality and EU regulation. Highly recommended. ...
For those interested in following the law and politics of the European Union, two blogs of note: Duke Law School Professor Francesca Bignami’s EU Law Web Log is a great place to keep up on Commission decisions, European Court of Justice judgments and other EU happenings. Also, as LawPundit pointed out, Swedish EU Commissioner Margot Wallstrom has started her own...
From the “The More Things Change….” Dept: CNN has picked up a story from AP about the recently declassified documents of a Nixon and Ford-era Cabinet Committee to Combat Terrorism. The Committee, which included Henry Kissinger and Secretary of State William Rogers, and included the input of Rudolf Giuliani, who was at the time an Associate Deputy Attorney General in...
The testimony of Harold Koh, the Dean of Yale Law School and former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the nomination of Alberto Gonzales has been made available here. The Gonzales nomination and the related issues of the "Torture Memoranda" have been discussed at length in many public fora. I point...
As a follow-up to Julian's earlier post, I wanted to note that one of the co-authors of the recent paper assessing bias at the ICJ, Prof. Eric Posner of ther University of Chicago School of Law, will be speaking on this topic at Columbia Law School in New York on January 24th at 4:10 pm. The talk will be in...
In honor of Martin Luther King Day, I wanted to post a few thoughts on Dr. King’s message and the work of international law. Brian Lehrer on WNYC has been running a show today of short excerpts of readings in some way reflective of Dr. King’s message but about cultures other than our own. Also, for those interested in reading...
Julian's reply is informative but I think he is overstating my point and actually misses the core of my argument. In the end, I think we mean different things when we use the term "accountability." He writes that I "concede there are all sorts of problems with international institutions, but then suggests that the United States doesn't really have all that...
I want to weave together a few separate strands from earlier postings, particularly the question of UN accountability, skepticism towards multilateralism, and the rule of law. Julian is concerned about a double standard in which some commentators apply more lenient criteria to UN bad acts than to the U.S. I think we’re all in agreement that the UN needs...
My next post will concern some issues of accountability and the rule of law, but I wanted to point out to anyone who may be interested that Cambridge University Press has just published a book entitled On the Rule of Law: History, Politics, Theory by my colleague here at St. John's Law, Brian Tamanaha. Many lawyers, especially legal...
A quick note for anyone interested: a student has e-mailed me that this Thursday at 4:00 pm Eastern, C-Span will be airing a discussion with Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Stephen Breyer on “Whether Foreign Court Decisions Should Impact American Constitutional Law.” ...
