Tonight's episode of The Good Wife featured a Muslim-American man -- a former Army translator in Afghanistan -- who sues the U.S. government for torture and ends up being accused of supporting al-Qaeda. It was quite a fascinating episode; it's not everyday that a mainstream television show is built around Executive Order 13324, which blocks property and prohibits transactions with...
My thanks to Dave Glazier, Detlev Vagts, Roger Clark, and Devin Pendas for their insightful comments on my book. At the risk of sounding like I’ve plagiarized my response at EJIL: Talk!, I find it difficult to respond to those comments, because I almost completely agree with them. But I’ll give it a shot… Glazier My basic response to...
Kevin Heller’s magisterial survey of the Nuremberg Military Tribunals offers the first comprehensive account of the trials, as well as an insightful analysis of the tribunals’ jurisprudence and legal basis. Heller is an international lawyer of considerable insight and his assessment of the trials is always judicious, frequently thought provoking, and, even if some scholars may quibble with this or...
There is much to be analyzed in the Ninth Circuit's en banc decision in Sarei v. Rio Tinto. I am exercising a guest blogging privilege to address two aspects: its holding regarding the nature of the cause of action (and implicitly, the remedy) available under the ATS, and, the consequences of that holding to a proper understanding of the extension of that remedy...
I have been raising various queries about the eurozone crisis and European governance - without making any claim to being an EU law scholar. University of Connecticut's Peter Lindseth is just that, however, and points us to a relatively new blog, Eutopialaw.com, where he and a number of other experts post regularly on these topics. I commend it to everyone,...
On top of everything else, Congress now threatens to severely restrict official contacts with Iran. This from Heather Hurlburt at Democracy Arsenal: If you're too transfixed by the prospect of the US losing its seat on the IAEA board of governors, losing Japanese funding through UNESCO for police training in Afghanistan, and potentially losing global patent protection, all...
This is a terrific book which ploughs much virgin territory. The dust jacket blurb describes it accurately as providing the “first comprehensive legal analysis of the twelve war crimes trials held in the American zone of occupation between 1946 and 1949, collectively known as the Nuremberg Military tribunals (NMTs).” It is not the only material on the topic...
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had to cancel her visit to London today for the much-hyped cybersecurity conference, which was designed to push back against Russian and Chinese proposals for an "International Code of Conduct for Information Security." The Russian/Chinese proposal (co-authored with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan) is widely undestood as part of an effort to (1) move Internet governance away...
In a brief chapter titled "Legacy" Kevin Jon Heller opens up the issue of the influence of the Nuremberg Military tribunals (NMTs) on the later development of the international law of war. This contribution will expand on that chapter. First, it discusses the effect of the trials on the later behavior of nations and individuals. Did it deter potential criminal...
Although the twelve U.S. Nuremberg trials judged seven times as many defendants as the International Military Tribunal (IMT) and addressed a broader spectrum of international criminal law issues, including the first genocide prosecutions and the establishment of important principles of medical ethics, they have wallowed in comparative historical obscurity. The absence of meaningful coverage is ironic given, as Kevin...
Today is an historic day in world population statistics, marking the day that planet reaches seven billion inhabitants. What is amazing is, despite the phenomenal growth in population, the citizens of the world are becoming healthier and wealthier every year. Gapminder has an incredibly interesting timeline that shows the progression of life expectancy (y axis) and income per...
