Here's a recent poll from the Hudson Institute on how Americans view the United Nations. Hudson predictably plays up the negative responses (e.g., 71% believe the UN "needs to be significantly reformed"). But most of those answers were given in response to what look like leading questions (e.g., do you agree with the statement, "[the UN] needs to...
What a difference ten years makes. Leaving aside for a moment the doctrinal analysis, there’s a striking contrast in tone in this article as compared to Curt and Jack’s pathbreaking 1997 piece on CIL and federal common law (also published in the Harvard Law Review, a pdf of which you can find here). That article betrayed a discernible...
Waves of luminaries descended on the second annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative the end of last week in New York. On the one hand, it looks like a cult of personality, or perhaps of multiple personalities, in the sense of lots of very important people coming together to bask in each other’s reflected glory. Check out...
As reported in this Financial Times interview with Legal Adviser John Bellinger. How does this line up with the current difficulties between the Administration and Senate Republicans? Also from the FT, this story about how CIA interrogators in effect walked off the job at secret prisons shut down last week with the transfers to Guantanamo. ...
The Georgia Law Review has a Spring 2006 symposium issue recently out on emergency powers and the Constitution, organized by our own Kevin Heller and featuring a lead essay from Sanford Levinson, along with responses from Philip Bobbitt, Michael Stokes Paulsen, Kim Lane Scheppele, William Scheuerman, Mark Tushnet, and Kevin himself. It’s an excellent collection, with some genuine engagement....
John Yoo's op-ed in the Sunday New York Times left me scratching my head on a number of points. I'm most mystified by his claim that the presidency of the last 30-35 years has been weakened as an institution (he's got Dick Cheney to quote here, but that might not persuade everyone on the question). Were the Reagan,...
See Akhil Amar's column yesterday for Findlaw's Writ, complete with an oceanic theory of the Constitution. ...
Former State Department Legal Adviser William H. Taft IV has this essay on the US and IL in the current issue of the Yale Journal of International Law. It’s pretty tough talk, perhaps not surprising from someone who was on the losing end of internal executive branch deliberations regarding detainee treatment issues (this as Colin Powell more prominently parts...
Struck by the fact that the two articles in the May 2006 issue of the Yale Law Journal were both international law-related, I thought it might be interesting to see how IL is playing in main law reviews relative to the recent past. Unsurprisingly, the number of articles on IL subjects has increased pretty dramatically. In the two...
I wanted to say just a few words about Julian’s comment below to the effect that both sides are taking cheap shots in the debate over terrorism. I agree that some criticism of the Administration and its policies goes over the line - see the examples collected in this Boston Globe column by Jeff Jacoby. I also agree...
Okay, not exactly a headline that makes you want to click through on a Friday afternoon. As part of its "food issue" (don't expect recipes for blondies or table-setting ideas), The Nation has this piece on the right to food. I was expecting something from the bad old days of international law during which IL proponents thought it...
Reading through President Bush's speech yesterday on the commissions, war crimes, and secret detentions, it's striking how he repeatedly emphasized legality. At several points he asserted the lawfulness of the secret detention and of interrogation techniques (at one point noting that the program "has been subject to multiple legal reviews by the Department of Justice and CIA lawyers"). ...
