The much-feared and much-despised Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has declared an immediate and unilateral cease-fire in its long-standing brutal civil war in Uganda. This is good news but it hasn't really solved the looming problem of ICC indictments of four top LRA leaders. Peace talks have apparently been stymied because of these ICC indictments and the ICC Prosecutor...
After leaving the White House this week during his consultations with President Bush, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair met with California's Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to announce an agreement to start a global-warming-reducing emissions-trading market. Wait a minute, even though California often seems like a foreign country to many of us in the States, can California actually sign an agreement with a...
According to this report by Xinhua (China's news agency), the ICC has agreed not to interfere with peace talks between Uganda and its rebel opposition the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). Peace talks had previously broken down because of the ICC's arrest warrants against the LRA leaders. We'll see exactly what this means, because the ICC itself has not released...
This interesting Washington Post article on U.S. bioweapons research goes a bit too far trying to drum up a legal controversy. According to the Post, the Department of Homeland Security has a super-secret bioweapons research facility which some fear may violate the 1972 Convention Against Biological and Toxin Weapons. According to the Post article, the U.S. believes it is in...
I unwisely waded into a debate between Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review and Emily Bazelon of Slate over alleged mistakes and misrepresentations in Justice Stevens’ opinion for the Supreme Court in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. As I pointed out earlier this week, Ponnuru charged that Justice Stevens mistakenly used legislative history in the Hamdan decision and that this was a...
According to the UK's Guardian, families of UK soldiers killed in Iraq will be permitted to bring an action in UK courts challenging the legality of the U.S./U.K. led war in Iraq. I don't have a copy of the ruling, but apparently, the UK soldiers' relatives will bring a lawsuit alleging violation of the right to life guaranteed by...
Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review is charging that Justice Stevens' majority opinion in Hamdan has a factual mistake due to a misstatement in a brief co-authored by SCOTUSBlog founders Tom Goldstein and Amy Howe.* Justice Stevens' opinion dismisses speeches by Senators Kyl and Graham interpreting the Detainee Treatment Act to apply retroactively to Hamdan's case. In footnote 10 of...
As discussed previously, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton will probably be renominated this fall, and at least one key Republican Senator has already said he'll switch his position to support him. This does not mean Bolton has clear sailing, though. In an extraordinary piece of anonymous backbiting, this NYT story suggests all or most of Bolton's...
Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio was one of U.S. U.N. Ambassador John Bolton's biggest opponents during his failed nomination to the Senate last year. Voinovich has now publicly changed his position and is basically inviting the President to renominate Bolton for the rest of his term (Bolton's recess appointment expires this fall). Here's why: For me or my colleagues in...
One of the best things to happen to the international law academy in recent years is the introduction of methodological insights from other parts of the academy. Professors Jack Goldsmith and Eric Posner, for instance, introduced a long overdue application of rational choice theory to international law in their recent book "The Limits of International Law." ...
U. Chicago law prof Eric Posner has a typically effective op-ed in the WSJ($) today arguing that it simply doesn't make sense to apply Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions (the provision at issue in Hamdan) to the conflict with Al Qaeda. His argument is pragmatic rather than formalistically legal, but it is also sensibly grounded in a...
Like many of my students, I sometimes find the law's indeterminacy and disagreement over its content disturbing and frustrating. So it is a relief to return to the very few legal rules things that (almost) everyone agrees with. As the NYT's analysis today points out, there is utter and complete consensus among legal scholars that Congress could repeal...
