I received an email today from the Berkeley Journal of International Law requesting that I post this announcement: The Berkeley Journal of International Law (BJIL) is accepting submissions for it's annual symposium issue. The symposium issue shares its theme with the eighth annual Stefan A. Riesenfeld Symposium -- to be held in Berkeley on March 14 -- "Realizing The Potential...
Opinio Juris is pleased to announced that in cooperation with the Council on Foreign Relations we will be sponsoring a book discussion with Walter Russell Mead about his new book, God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World. The book discussion will be held the week of February 4, and we wanted to announce...
David Luban has an extensive post over at Balkinization that makes it sound like Padilla's case against John Yoo is much easier than it is. It's not an easy case. I was especially surprised by Luban's discussion of immunities. Here's what he writes: 3. What about immunities? The short answer: only a few government officers get absolute immunity...
Paul Marshall has an interesting op-ed in the Washington Post on the spiritual capital of successful countries. I know Marshall well and his analysis seems exactly right to me. In the piece he discusses a fascinating World Values Survey, which includes a cultural map of the world, pictured at left (click to enlarge). That map divides the...
In his book, All Things Considered, published in 1915, G.K. Chesterton had this to say about the virtue of internationalism and the vice of cosmopolitanism: It is obvious that there is a great deal of difference between being international and being cosmopolitan. All good men are international. Nearly all bad men are cosmopolitan. If we are to be international we must...
Jivan Yakoob is a Canadian citizen who is a permanent resident living in Michigan. According to the indictment, Yakoob went online and arranged to meet with a thirteen-year-old girl in Windsor, Ontario to have sex with her. It's a sting operation, of course, and when Yakoob arrived at the shopping mall in Canada he was arrested. He...
It has been a long time since the Supreme Court has referenced foreign and international sources in constitutional cases. Since Roper was decided in March 2005, the Supreme Court has not issued a single decision relying on the interpretive approach outlined in Roper and Lawrence. In the most recent term, I am not aware of a single Supreme...
The Pew Research Center has a nice end-of-the-year roundup of public opinion. According to Pew, here are the top public opinion stories of the year that have international themes (numbered in the order they placed in the overall listing): 7. A Better View of Iraq, Up to a Point… For years, public views of the war in Iraq were increasingly negative...
The New York Times has an extremely interesting article on the role of availability cascades in media coverage of global warming. Today’s interpreters of the weather are what social scientists call availability entrepreneurs: the activists, journalists and publicity-savvy scientists who selectively monitor the globe looking for newsworthy evidence of a new form of sinfulness, burning fossil fuels...
A federal district court in Los Angeles has rendered an important decision dismissing claims for alleged victims of the Armenian Genocide. At issue in Deirmenjian v. Deutsche Bank is a California statute, Code of Civil Procedure § 354.45, which extended until December 31, 2016 the statute of limitations for, inter alia, looted assets claims brought by victims of...
This story by Robert Carroon provides the historical background of the 1863 poem “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (pictured left). This poem is especially appropriate for any Christmas celebrated in the midst of war. Happy Holidays to all! In March 1863 a seventeen year old native of Cambridge, Massachusetts, slipped away...
A federal district court in West Virginia recently rendered one of the most interesting extradition decisions I have ever read. The case of In re Extradition of Exoo, 2007 WL 3166926, involved allegations that George Exoo aided and abetted the suicide of Rosemary Toole. Exoo is a minister for Compassionate Chaplaincy Foundation, an organization that travels abroad to...
