In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Author: Julian Ku

15 Oct

It sure looks like it, according to Bloomberg. The Pentagon is reviewing the Bush administration’s doctrine of preemptive military strikes with an eye to modifying or possibly ending it. The international environment is “more complex” than when President George W. Bush announced the policy in 2002, Kathleen Hicks, the Defense Department’s deputy undersecretary for strategy, said in an interview. “We’d really like to...

|
14 Oct

The Washington Post reports that a prominent Democratic fundraiser and close ally of Senator John Kerry (chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee) is seeking to be permitted to lobby on behalf of the current Sudanese government.  This may seem a little weird, and even morally distasteful, but it is another logical consequence of the engagement strategy.  As the hopeful...

|
10 Oct

Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina weighs in today with a WSJ oped blasting the Obama Administration's policy toward Honduras. Putting aside the merits of DeMint's analysis for the time being, I found his oped interesting for two reasons: one having to do with DeMint's somewhat sketchy actions, and the other with Harold Koh's potentially sketchy legal advice. 1) "One Voice"? DeMint is...

|
09 Oct

This video from Anne Bayefsky of the Human Rights Council meetings on the Goldstone Report is fascinating (though I am not on board with her over-the-top attack on Goldstone personally).   But note the indiscriminate and  deeply hypocritical use of the words "genocide," "war crimes," and "crimes against humanity" by the least morally attractive member states of the HRC (How...

|
07 Oct

Anne Bayefsky of the Hudson Institute suggests that the U.S. is endorsing a less than robust view of the right to free expression in a recent Human Rights Council resolution sponsored by the U.S. (along with Egypt).  The resolution does appear to give an unusual amount of lip service to the combatting racism and discrimination (given its topic), but it...

|
07 Oct

Are the two breakaway sections of Georgia (South Ossetia  & Abhkazia) states? If not, why is Kosovo a state? The difficulty international lawyers have in answering these questions suggests that the most basic and fundamental questions of international law remain unresolved and deeply contested.  What are the requirements for statehood?  There are some generally accepted criteria, under international law, but they...

|
04 Oct

Via Instapundit, I notice that the World Bank is facing capital shortfalls that could put out of "business" in twelve months. “By the middle of next year we will face serious constraints,” said its president Robert Zoellick, as he launched a major campaign to persuade rich nations to pour more money into the Washington-based institution. He conceded that such a task was...

|
03 Oct

In the inaugural issue of the Yale Law Journal Online, the new online companion to the Yale Law Journal, Peggy McGuinness, Peter Spiro, Robert Ahdieh and I respond to Professor Michael Stokes Paulsen's recent article:  "The Constitutional Power to Interpret International Law." All of us are critical, although in different ways. I am the most sympathetic to Paulsen, but...

|
01 Oct

Here is one part of the Obama Administration policy that I can (sort of) support: an effort to reach a comprehensive sustainable peace agreement in Sudan.  Although the Obama envoy, Scott Gration, is getting plenty of deserved flak from right and left for his infamous "cookies" quote about dealing with the Sudanese government, the general idea seems sound. Absent any...

|