Ben Wittes has a post at Lawfare today discussing ways in which the Obama administration might be able to avoid litigating the ACLU/CCR lawsuit challenging Al-Aulaqi's targeting. One of his preferred responses is the "political question" doctrine; in his view, "enemy targeting" is a classic example of a political question with which the judiciary should not interfere. I would not be...
Georgetown law professor Randy Barnett and Virginia legislator William Howell lay out the case for a new "Repeal Amendment" to the U.S. Constitution in tomorrow's WSJ. Such an amendment would permit repeal of any federal law if two-thirds of the state legislatures approved resolutions to do so. I don't know what I think about this proposal, which would quite dramatically...
The conventional wisdom among many international law folks is that the U.S. has (wrongly) embraced American exceptionalism in world affairs, often to the detriment of compliance with international law. I don't disagree that American exceptionalism exists, but I think the main problem with the "exceptionalism" meme is the idea that the U.S. is unique in its "exceptionalist" philosophy. Other countries can,...
I have long enjoyed my association with Opinio Juris. But what do you readers think of us? Here in the United States, the ABA Journal is once again compiling a list of what it considers to be the 100 "best" law blogs. Now, we can debate whether and how the ABA Journal is positioned to judge the "best" legal blogs. ...
Reading a justifiably nasty review of Meghan McCain's Dirty, Sexy Politics, I came across this unintentionally funny gem: The most obvious problem with Dirty, Sexy Politics is that grammatically, the book appears to be the work of a high school sophomore. To be more accurate, it appears to be the first draft of an essay written...
Gerald Steinberg, the head of right-wing propaganda outlet NGO Monitor, is not happy about George Soros' recent $100 million gift to Human Rights Watch: In accepting a huge grant from George Soros, Human Rights Watch has spurned the public advice (and warning) offered nearly a year ago by its founder Robert Bernstein. Rather than grapple with the serious...
I have received a significant amount of feedback on my previous post on apportioning responsibility for international violations and therefore I wanted to do a couple of follow up posts on the subject. As Judge Simma indicated in his Separate Opinion in the Oil Platforms case, there arguably is a general principle of international law that joint tortfeasors are...
Something that our European readers have already probably heard as it is one of the most viewed stories on the BBC website (but not so much here in the U.S.), the Basque separatist terrorist organization ETA has renounced (at least for now) the use of violence: Armed Basque separatist group Eta says it will not carry out "armed actions" in its campaign for...
Next week the ICJ will have oral proceedings in the case Application of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Georgia v. Russian Federation). The .pdf of the press release is here. As far as I can tell, unlike in the Kosovo proceedings, there will not be an internet simulcast. (The Kosovo simulcast was very...
As you may remember from my previous post on this topic, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the President of the autonomous republic of Kalmikia the President of FIDE (the world chess federation), has been named in a suit before the Court of Arbitration for Sport seeking the disqualification of his FIDE candidacy. While that case is still set to be argued next week, he has announced...
Mike Scharf and Paul Williams have published an interesting collection of recollections and colloquys among all ten living State Department legal advisers, Shaping Foreign Policy in Times of Crisis: The Role of International Law and the State Department Legal Adviser, released by Cambridge UP earlier this year. In addition to essays from each, recounting particular episodes from their tenures, there...
