Marty Lederman has kindly published a long post I have written on what — if anything — the Justice Case has to say about the criminal responsibility of government lawyers like Yoo. Here is the introduction:Scholars who argue that John Yoo’s authorship of the infamous torture memos makes him complicit in various war crimes -– torture, illegal detention, etc....
As a brief follow-up to Sonya's post, it's worth noting that the IHT began trying Tariq Aziz, Saddam's deputy prime minister and the highest ranking Christian in Saddam's regime, earlier this week:Iraq's former deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, was known as the 'Ace of Spades' in the United States' deck of playing cards of Iraq's most wanted. But he was better-known...
The following article was written by Sonya Sceats, Associate Fellow in International Law at Chatham House in London. It first appeared in The World Today, Chatham House's journal. I am reprinting it here for our readers who are interested in the more recent activities of the Iraqi High Tribunal. Rowdy sessions of the Iraq High Tribunal attracted sensational daily...
Via Crooked Timber, I learned today that Charles Tilly, one of the great political and historical sociologists of his time, has died. The news makes me very sad, because Chuck was one of the most important academic influences in my life: I took every class he offered, from "Introduction to Political Sociology" to a three-person independent study on social...
The very first post I wrote for Opinio Juris -- more than two years ago, when I was guest-blogging -- was about the inequality of arms that exists between the prosecution and defense at the international tribunals. I recall spending hours on the post, mustering facts, honing my arguments, polishing my prose. I was proud of my first...
Since being unanimously acquitted by the ICTR Appeals Chamber in 2006, Andre Ntagerura has lived as a virtual prisoner in a UN safehouse in Arusha, unable to find a country that will take him. Last November, he filed a motion asking the ICTR to order Canada, his first choice, to grant him asylum. On Wednesday, the Court decided...
I realize that Bluebook bashing is something of a varsity sport among legal academics. And yes, much of the Bluebook's arcana is profoundly annoying. But you know what? I'll take that arcana over social science citation any day. I've been writing another "cognitive psychology of [insert concept here]" essay — mens rea, this time — and...
I am delighted to comment on Jenia’s essay. It’s an exceptionally important piece of scholarship, one that I hope will spur greater interest in the empirical study of international criminal law. Careful work of this kind is all too rare in ICL – the product, no doubt, of how difficult and time-consuming it is! Jenia has done international criminal...
Good:The United States military said Monday that it would release an Associated Press photographer who has been jailed in Iraq without trial for two years on accusations of terrorism and kidnapping. The announcement came after two rulings over the previous week by panels of Iraqi judges, who said that the photographer, Bilal Hussein, was covered by an amnesty law and should...
Naomi Norberg has a fascinating post today at IntLawGrrls about the legal treatment of modern-day pirates. I just want to point readers to a recent article in The Sunday Times about British fears that captured pirates could ask for asylum in the UK:The Royal Navy, once the scourge of brigands on the high seas, has been told by the...
Michigan Law Review's "2008 Survey of Books Related to the Law" is now available on-line. Two OJ'ers have review essays in the issue: yours truly, reviewing Mark Drumbl's Atrocity, Punishment, and International Law; and Roger, reviewing Ron Krotoszynski's The First Amendment in Cross-Cultural Perspective: A Comparative Legal Analysis of the Freedom of Speech. The issue also contains a...
We celebrate the birth of new blogs, so it's only appropriate to mourn their passing. Scott Horton, long one of our most gifted bloggers, is officially calling it quits. The only consolation is that, freed from the onerous burden of churning out 2,000 blog words per day (!), Scott intends to devote more time to long-form journalism and...
