Samantha Power, a tireless Pulitzer-Prize-winning advocate of more aggressive action by the United States to stop genocide and war crimes, offers her take on why the ICC would be more effective than an ad hoc tribunal (a topic we've been batting about here) in today's NYT. Count me as a skeptic of her claim that the ICC will deter war...
East Timor announced today that it has reached a tentative agreement with Indonesia to set up a Commission of Truth and Friendship to investigate human rights abuses and crimes committed during Indonesia's occupation of East Timor. While somewhat controversial among human rights groups who sought a Rwanda or Yugoslav-style ad hoc tribunal, the East Timorese foreign minister explained that: We...
Who says President Bush doesn't respect the judgments of international tribunals? While President Bush's "austerity" budget full of sweeping cuts is mostly a domestic story, two of his proposed cuts can be explained as an effort to bring the U.S. into compliance with WTO decisions. First, and more obscurely, the budget calls for eliminating the so-called Byrd Amendment, a provision much...
At first glance, the last thing international law scholarship needs is more theory. Yet, while there is plenty of IL theory, in some ways IL theory is relatively undeveloped. Most importantly, until recently, IL theory was unaffected by the rational-choice juggernaut that swept almost every other discipline, including IL's sister discipline of international relations. But rational choice has arrived with a...
Japan has officially requested the creation of a WTO dispute settlement panel claiming that U.S. anti-dumping laws violate WTO rules. Meanwhile, South Korea has requested a panel to challenge Japan's administration of a seaweed import quota that results in strict limits on seaweed imports from South Korea. My American-centric worldview suggests that the challenge to U.S. anti-dumping rules...
A quick response to Peggy’s very thoughtful post taking me to task for criticizing the Guantanamo Alien Tort Statute lawsuits. I think most of our disagreement is simply due to sloppy language on my part. I do think it is strange that enemy combatants will sue the U.S. in its own courts for violations committed during a period of military...
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld tried to resign (twice) over the Abu Ghraib scandals last year, but President Bush refused both times to accept his resignation. As I explained here, I think someone, probably Rumsfeld, should take responsibility for Abu Ghraib and I almost thought his attempt to resign reflected a similar feeling. But then, he makes this boneheaded statement: What was going...
Publius passes along this "liveblogged" account ofJudge David Sentelle's talk at Columbia Law School on Tuesday. His views matter more than usual because he sits on the court that will hear the appeal of the Guantanamo detainee decision we have been blogging about. Unfortunately for anyone hoping to get a preview of the outcome, Judge Sentelle is an experienced...
The Interim Report from Paul Volcker's Independent Inquiry Commission investigating the UN Oil-for-Food scandal has been out for barely two hours, and already the blogosphere is on the case (via instapundit) declaring it at once damning and a whitewash. Of course, it's one thing to react to the report, it's another to actually read through the (unbelievably boring) 246 page...
Marty Lederman of Balkinization has been kind enough to leave a comment below wondering why I only give him a "split" decision in his debate with Heather Macdonald over U.S. interrogation tactics. They have recently continued their debate here. I agree with Mickey Kaus that the Macdonald-Lederman debate usefully clarifies a lot of the confusion (some of it...
Michael Scharf, a professor of international law at Case Western Reserve University Law School, was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize yesterday by six foreign governments for his work "significantly contributing to the promotion of peace throughout the globe by providing crucial pro bono legal assistance to states and nonstate entities involved in peace negotiations and in bringing war criminals...
David Glazier, a former naval officer and current research fellow at UVA's Center for National Security Law takes issue with my claim that due process rights in Guantanamo may lead to due process rights at other U.S. military bases overseas. He writes: Having spent extensive time at overseas naval bases (I was stationed at Yokosuka, Japan for 20 months and...
