The U.S. District Court for Washington D.C. has dismissed most of a lawsuit against Donald Rumsfeld and various high-level military officials alleging responsibility for detainee abuse in Guantanamo Bay. The plaintiffs are four UK nationals who were detained, and then released, by the U.S. authorities in Guantanamo. They have now sued for damages in Rasul v. Rumsfeld (not on the...
Current ICJ judge Rosalyn Higgins was elected today to be the next President of the International Court of Justice. Higgins, who was named to the Court in 1995, was the first female member of the ICJ and remains its only female judge. Hailing from the UK, which named her a Dame of the British Empire, Professor...
Following up on the law prof's letter about NSA spying from last week, Andrew McCarthy of National Review Online has dug up a very interesting 1994 memo from Clinton's then-OLC chief Walter Dellinger arguing that the President has the authority to refuse to execute statutes that are unconstitutional. Dellinger's memo is actually not limited to foreign affairs statutes, but with...
As AG Alberto Gonzales prepares to testify before Congress on the controversial NSA spying letter, the law professor critics of the NSA spying dispute have filed this blistering response to the DOJ's 43-page defense of the warrantless wiretapping. I'm a bit surprised at the letter's sharp tone, but it is a pretty effective letter nonetheless.For a different take, see this...
I will speaking tomorrow at the Barnes Symposium held at the University of South Carolina Law School. The symposium as a whole will discuss the legitimacy of western views of human rights and will have participants from all over the world, both in person and via video conference (a list of speakers is found here). I myself will...
The U.S. Congress last night brought the U.S. in compliance with two WTO decisions. First, it essentially scrapped the U.S. program of subsidies for cotton farmers. The proximate cause of this decision was Brazil's victory last year in the WTO finding that such subsidies violated WTO obligations. The other proximate cause, of course, is the renewed emphasis in Congress...
As Roger noted a couple of weeks ago, my colleague Nora Demleitner testified on behalf of newly-confirmed Justice Samuel Alito during his confirmation hearings. Nora, a criminal and immigration law expert and a former Alito clerk, has suggested that Alito will be quite progressive on certain immigration law-related issues. Here are some of her further thoughts on Alito's decision in...
The Supreme Court is poised to decide one of the most important cases involving the enforceability of treaties in the last few decades (indeed, maybe the last century). In Sanchez-Llamas v. Oregon, the Supreme Court will consider whether the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations gives such aliens the private rights of action as well as the remedy of suppression for...
The Washington Post reports that the U.S. and South Korea will likely announce the opening of talks to sign a comprehensive free trade agreement. For the U.S, such an agreement would represent the most economically significant free trade agreement since the implementation of NAFTA in 1994.As Roger has noted, the U.S. free trade strategy under President Bush has been to...
Next week will be a busy one at the ICJ.First, the ICJ will release its jurisdictional judgment in the case brought by Congo against Rwanda on Friday, February 3. Congo filed the case back 2002 alleging that Rwanda violated a variety of international human rights treaties by carrying out armed attacks in Congo during the height of the Congo civil...
A treaty demarcating undersea maritime boundaries between Australia and New Zealand came into effect today with pretty much no fanfare. The “Treaty between the Government of Australia and the Government of New Zealand establishing certain Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf Boundaries” was the product of five years of Australia-NZ negotiations. Such negotiations are required by the UN Convention on...
Canadians voted today in a hotly contested election pitting a resurgent Canadian Conservative Party against a defensive but still dominant Liberal Party. Early results show the Conservatives winning a plurality of the seats. They still may not have enough seats, however, to form a government.I don't have a dog in this race, but I am struck that one of the...
