A reporter from the BBC reports here on his observation of a hearing conducted by an Administrative Review Board for one of the detainees held by the U.S. at Guantanamo Bay. As I have discussed in the past, elements of the U.S. detention policy, including its process for reviewing the status of detainees is being challenged in U.S. Courts.This is...
Despite relentless attacks from establishment media like the NYT (who called him the "worst of some bad nominees"), it looks like John Bolton will be confirmed as U.N. Ambassador. Curiously, very few of the news reports of his testimony yesterday highlighted the ways in which this so-called hardliner has adopted pro-internationalists positions. The FT is the only account I've seen...
Chris makes some very good points about the Bush Administration's foreign policy "schizophrenia" and listing the nomination of Bolton as symptomatic of the problem. Not surprisingly, I disagree. I think this "schizoprenia" is actually a good thing.I do agree that there is some back-and-forth in the Bush Administration's foreign policy recently, but I actually think this reflects an increasing sophistication...
The WTO's Appellate Body ruled yesterday that most U.S. laws (including state laws) restricting internet gambling do not violate WTO obligations (The decision can be found here). This reversed a Panel Report in favor of Antigua and Barbados alleging that U.S. restrictions on offshore internet gambling was discriminatory against their internet gambling industries. This is a complicated issue, and some...
Today the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, a case involving a challenge to the military commission trials of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. This is an enormously complicated case involving questions concerning the judicial enforceability of treaties such as the Geneva Convention, the President's power to interpret and apply those treaties, and the President's authority...
The WSJ reports today (reg. req'd) on a speech from last month by former State Department Legal Adviser William H. Taft IV criticizing the U.S. government's policy on detentions in Guantanamo Bay. Here are the highlights:There is no basis in the law of war, criminal law or human-rights law for such practices [in Guantanamo]. Nor is it tenable...
Sudan's government is (not surprisingly) refusing to hand over alleged war criminals to the ICC, as it is required to do per the U.N. Security Council's resolution last week. Indeed, according to the BBC, tens of thousands of Sudanese are protesting the U.N. referral and even directly blaming the U.S. "We are coming here to say to America 'no' to...
It looks like Opinio Juris will be temporarily moving to Washington D.C. over the next few days, more specifically the Loews L'Enfant Plaza Hotel where the annual meeting of the American Society of International Law is being held. If you see one of us there, don't be shy about pulling us aside and telling us how wonderful you think this...
This week Cambodia moved closer to setting up an international tribunal to try war crimes committed by the notorious Khmer Rouge regime. The genocide of Pol Pot and his associates has been documented by numerous groups, most notably by Yale's Cambodian Genocide Program. More wrangling over funding and structure of the tribunal remains, but it will likely be a "hybrid"...
The head of the U.N.'s Electoral Assistance Division is being accused of permitting or creating an "abusive" environment full of sexual innuendo and intimidation in a recent preliminary report commissioned by the U.N. Sounds like fairly standard hostile workplace environment claims, except the U.N. is not subject to U.S. sexual harassment laws. Indeed, it is unclear exactly what...
My ubiquitous colleague Eric Freedman, who has in the past 10 days testified on the Terry Schiavo case before Congress and consulted in the Medellin case, passes along this info about yet another one of his cases. Judge Henry H. Kennedy of the D.C. federal district court has granted a preliminary injunction preventing the Defense Department from transferring...
Having failed to motivate myself to get down to D.C. for oral argument in Medellin, and being too cheap to shell out the money for an instant transcript, I will have to content myself with reviewing the several very interesting press accounts of the argument at SCOTUSBlog, Slate, Law.com, and the NYT. All of these accounts seem to agree that...
