I want to draw readers attention (if they haven't already seen it) to this excellent discussion of the international legality of the Bin Laden killing by Alon Margalit over at EJIL Talk!. It is particularly instructive for Americans to get a better sense of the non-US views on the Bin Laden killing. It notes that the nearly uniform State support for...
Perhaps. At least they are getting their waterskis on. According to Politico, Amnesty International has filed a 1,000 page memorandum demanding that Canadian authorities arrest or extradite former U.S. President George W. Bush. “Canada is required by its international obligations to arrest and prosecute former President Bush given his responsibility for crimes under international law including torture,” Susan Lee, Americas Director...
Interesting story out of Charlotte, N.C. about the family of Samir Khan, one of the U.S. citizens killed in the drone attack on Awlaki last week. (h/t Michael Rubin) An official from the U.S. State Department has called the Charlotte family of al-Qaida propagandist Samir Khan to offer the government's condolences on his death in a U.S. drone attack last week...
John Yoo, not surprisingly, has some thoughts on the leaked secret memo on Awlaki.(sorry forgot to link his full post earlier). Let’s give partial credit where it is due. Apparently the Obama administration argues that al-Awlaki was a legitimate target because he is a member of an enemy engaged in hostile conduct against the United States. At least Obama has figured...
Stewart Baker, former assistant secretary of Homeland Security during the Bush Administration, has this very powerful and clear explanation of how legal rules are weakening U.S. defenses against a cyber attack. Note the slam on using international law rules to regulate cyber war. (h/t Vincent Vitowsky). Across the federal government, lawyers are tying themselves in knots of legalese. Military lawyers are trying...
Professors Samuel Estreicher, John McGinnis, Michael Ramsey, Mark Weisburd, Ernest Young and myself, in partnership with the National Association of Manufacturers, filed a brief amicus curiae today in Doe v. Nestle, a Ninth Circuit Alien Tort Statute case. In the wake of the Second Circuit's decision in Kiobel, but also the DC and Seventh Circuit decisions, the question of whether and...
The leaks are already starting about the U.S. government's process for determining who to target for drone strikes. Here is the latest. (Reuters) - American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials. There is no public record of...
John Bolton and Dan Blumenthal have an op-ed in tomorrow's WSJ offering a new argument against U.S. ratification of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. It's all about China. ...
Former IMF Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn has asserted immunity under international law from the lawsuit filed by Nafissatou Diallo, the maid who is accusing him of sexually attacking her. “Mr. Strauss-Kahn enjoyed absolute immunity under customary international law not only while he was head of the IMF, but also for the period of time after he had resigned from his post and...
It is hard to know how seriously to take this report, or even if it is accurate. But if it is accurate, this could be trouble for the U.S. drone strike program in Pakistan. ISLAMABAD: Human Rights Ministry (HRM) has decided to take up matter of drone attacks with United Nations under international humanitarian law and file an official complain to...
International lawyers from outside the U.S. often wonder why exactly the U.S. has yet to join the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. This is a good question, since most U.S. international lawyers support joining the treaty, they are not usually able to give a fair description of the basis for opposing the convention. I am a squish...
Something I learned about while I was in China is that China claims, as a matter of international law, that it has "indisputable sovereignty" over most of the (oil-rich) South China Sea. This graphic illustrates the scope of China's sovereignty claims. China hasn't had a navy that could enforce this claim, until now. So Vietnam and the Philippines have been...
