Along with my co-author, Joshua Newcomer, I've posted a new article on SSRN -- "Political" Commitments and the Constitution. It's forthcoming in the Virginia Journal of International Law, so I expect readers will get a chance to comment on it here at Opinio Juris once it's in print as part of our regular VJIL symposia. But, we'd also welcome comments...
With all the attention to the bailout legislation last week, few noticed how much the Senate did on the treaty front. But, as I suggested in my recent post, the Senate had an opportuntity to set a record in terms of its treaty actions and it easily did so, passing resolutions of advice and consent for some 78 treaties (the whole list can be...
We've spent a lot of time here at Opinio Juris on the implications of the Supreme Court's Medellin decision. Very little of that discussion, however, has considered the decision's impact on the Senate's role in U.S. treaty-making. That may be because the Court itself spent so little time on the Senate. It did recognize that the intent of the Senate,...
A couple of years ago, I examined whether popular conceptions of the current Bush Administration's disdain for treaties had quantitative support. I found to my surprise that the Bush Administration did not appear to be concluding significantly fewer treaties (whether solely pursuant to Article II or to all forms of U.S. agreement-making combined). Looking just at Article II treaty activity in...
I'm up for tenure this year, which helps explain (I hope) in part my lighter-than-usual blogging of late. One of the things that has come up in the process is how my home institution (Temple) compares to other law schools in terms of the timing at which tenure and promotion are offered. Temple hires folks starting out in law teaching as...
The Supreme Court's Medellin decision has generated lots of academic attention (Julian and I, for example, are both participating in a joint ASIL-ABA Task Force on Treaties developed to address the future status of treaties in US law, which I'm sure will generate blog posts from one or both of us in the months ahead). This past week also saw the DC Circuit rely on Medellin explicitly...
The State of Texas carried out its execution of Jose Ernesto Medellin late Tuesday night. It did so following the Supreme Court's denial of a stay, 5-4. The split is unsurprising, with the majority focused (accurately I suspect) on the fact that a legislative fix was unlikely, and reading DOJ's silence on the stay request as consistent with a larger...
I've been spending more time than is probably healthy over the last year researching the Compact Clause. Article 1, Section 10 of the Constitution prohibits U.S. states from entering into any "treaty, alliance or confederation" and bans them "without the consent of Congress" from entering "into any agreement or compact with another state, or with a foreign power." The Supreme Court...
More than a year ago the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs convened a National War Powers Commission, which today unanimously issued its report on improving future relations between the Executive and Legislature when it comes to involving U.S. forces in conflict. The bipartisan Commission was chaired by Former Secretaries of State James A. Baker III and...
The media is awash in stories about the stunningly successful rescue operation mounted by the Colombian military that freed 15 long-held hostages from FARC forces. A key part of the operation apparently involved convincing FARC rebels to move the hostages to meet with an "international mission" as the set-up for getting the hostages aboard a Colombian military helicopter and...
Last week, the states parties to the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) held elections for seven of the 21 seats on the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS). Here are the results: Among those seven members, Judge Wolfrum (Germany), Judge Akl(Lebanon), Judge Marotta Rangel (Brazil), Judge Chandrasekhara Rao (India) and Judge...
On the lighter side of international news this week, comes word that the international space station toilet has broken, leading to obvious difficulties for the station's inhabitants (not to mention plenty of toilet humor back here on earth). Now, toilets in space raise all sorts of logistical and engineering issues, nicely described by Jacob Leibenluft in today's Slate. ...
