China has been moving to catch up with the US and Israel in production of military UAV drones, reports the Wall Street Journal today, in an article by Jeremy Page (Friday, Nov. 19, 2010, A11). The article says that the uptick in drone output has surprised the West: Western defense officials and experts were surprised to see more than 25...
This Google published an extremely useful and interesting white paper on the 21st-century Internet trade agenda. The basic argument is that the Internet will never reach its full potential if governments continue to impose restrictions on the free flow of information. The statistics included in the report are amazing. Online traffic has increased by 66 percent in the past five...
Tod Lindberg, editor of the Hoover Institution's Policy Review, reports in the Weekly Standard on a blunt message delivered by Senator Lindsey Graham (R-NC) at a discussion meeting of senior transatlantic policy makers, the Halifax International Security Forum. It's not a forum that would attract a lot of attention, but the attendees are very senior in transatlantic relations and NATO....
I don't have time to respond to the Ghailani verdict, which Julian notes below. I would simply direct readers to Ben Wittes' superb post at Lawfare, in which he criticizes those who view the verdict as a vindication of the military commissions. Here's a snippet: Second, it really is not clear that prosecutors would have fared better in a military...
Here we go again! The U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations may hold a hearing today on U.S. participation in the Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (I say may because I can't seem to find it on the Senate FRC schedule). This is at least the third time the Committee has looked at CEDAW and, I believe,...
Wow! The first civilian trial of a Gitmo detainee, Ahmed Ghailani, results in a near-acquittal. The first former Guantanamo Bay detainee to be tried in federal criminal court was found not guilty on Wednesday on all but one of the 285 counts he faced for his role in the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings. The Washington Post reporter follows up this lead...
I have my podcast debut this week over at Surprisingly Free -- "a weekly podcast featuring in-depth discussions with an eclectic mix of authors, academics, and entrepreneurs at the intersection of technology, policy, and economics." I talk about my forthcoming article, An e-SOS for Cyberspace, with Surprisingly Free's host, Jerry Brito. Click here for a listen....
Gotta say, even though I write about issues of self-determination, secession, and statehood, I didn't expect to read this on the front page of the Arts and Leisure section of the Sunday New York Times: At a glance it looked like any small-town fair, with smoke wafting from the barbecue, families gathering around picnic tables, music percolating over loudspeakers and doting parents...
While doing research for an essay on sentencing and the rights of defendants in international criminal law -- my contribution to the international law/Islamic law conference to which I'm now heading -- I stumbled across an exceptional essay by Shahram Dama, a professor at John Marshall Law School. Here is the abstract: Although ranking among the most fundamental principles of criminal...
I am delighted to announce that my colleague Carolyn Evans has been appointed Dean of the Melbourne Law School -- the first female Dean in the law school's history. Carolyn is one of the world's leading law and religion scholars, as her biography attests: Carolyn has degrees in Arts and Law from Melbourne University and a doctorate from Oxford University...
This is a wild tale of self-execution (which, I'm fairly sure, is the first time anyone has used the adjective "wild" to describe the self-execution concept). For years, the Bush Administration sought to get the U.S. Congress to amend the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) to ease licensing restrictions on arms exports to two of the United States' closest allies -- the...
Probably many readers have seen this over at Lawfare, but Ben Wittes has a very interesting account of the oral argument from a few days ago on the Al-Aulaqi targeted killing lawsuit. A snippet: Judge Bates was deeply engaged with counsel for both sides throughout the argument. At the hearing’s end (shortly after I had left), he made clear that his...
