The Office of Legal Counsel has released an opinion asserting the constitutionality of President's Obama's use of force against Libya. Here's how it frames the question: [T]he President’s legal authority to direct military force in Libya turns on two questions: first, whether United States operations in Libya would serve sufficiently important national interests to permit the President’s action as Commander in...
This time concerning the Goldstone Report and whether Israel intentionally targeted civilians during Operation Cast Lead as a matter of policy. You know a post is in trouble when it's entitled "Human Rights Watch Lies re: Goldstone Retraction," but then states, three paragraphs later, "Well, maybe lying isn’t quite right. Roth chose his words carefully, and I suppose...
The American Branch of the International Law Association has a call for panel proposals for International Law Weekend 2011, which takes place October 20-22 in New York City. The theme of this year's ILW is "International Law and National Politics." The call for proposals can be found here, and includes the following information about submissions, which are due to the...
There's a great article by Professor Adam Goodheart in the New York Times describing how Union Major General Benjamin Butler, a lawyer by training, used the laws of war to help end slavery in America. When three fugitive slaves presented themselves to Butler at Fort Monroe, he had to quickly decide what to do with them. The Confederate...
The Kenyan government has filed a 30-page motion with the ICC's Pre-Trial Chamber II arguing that recent improvements to the Kenyan criminal-justice system render the cases against the Ocampo Six inadmissible. Here are the highlights of the reforms, from the motion's introduction (para. 2): 2. The Government's Application must be determined with a full understanding of the fundamental and far-reaching constitutional...
I am happy to pass along the following announcement for the forthcoming conference at Pace Law School on the use of empirical methods in teaching and writing about international law. Early registration closes this Wednesday, April 6. Here is the message from interest group co-chairs Cindy Galway Buys and Tom McDonnell: The Teaching International Law Interest Group of the...
It's amazing what not working for the government can do for one's ability to tell the truth. As readers likely know, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley was forced to resign last month for the sin of accurately describing Bradley Manning's abusive conditions of confinement as "ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid." (For his part, the ever-credulous Obama dismissed the abuse allegations...
Have you worked on post-conflict justice issues? Have you been part of a rule of law project in a conflict zone? If so, you may be of help to our colleague Professor Elena Baylis (Univ. of Pittsburgh), who is working on a really terrific empirical project on post-conflict justice. Here is the information from Elena which includes eligibility...
Assume that a U.S. agency modifies its interpretation of a federal statute to respond to an adverse WTO decision. In so doing, consistent with the Charming Betsy doctrine, its interpretation is brought into conformity with WTO jurisprudence with respect to one stage--the investigation stage--of the administrative proceeding. But the agency does not alter its interpretation of the federal...
The following is a guest-post written by Orde Kittrie, a professor at ASU's law school, and Sandy Spector, the deputy director of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. They very much want input from OJ's readership, so please post your thoughts. Our thanks to Orde and Sandy for contributing the post! Seven years after A.Q. Khan publicly confessed to...
Critics of the Security Council's decision to refer the situation in Libya to the ICC normally argue that the referral denies Gaddafi the option of going into exile instead of fighting to the death. That may or may not be true -- as I've noted previously, Max Boot's reliance on Charles Taylor's prosecution to make that argument fudges the actual...
On paper, courts-martial are far more fair than military commissions -- the substantive law they apply is superior, and their rules of evidence and procedure are designed to protect defendants, not ensure convictions. Unfortunately, a recent McClatchy investigation indicates that literally hundreds of courts-martial might have relied on evidence that was unreliable and even fabricated by an unethical forensic scientist...
