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...
I'm at Penn Station, waiting for the train from New York City back to DC, happy but slightly dazed after an intense three day conference in celebration of the 35th anniversary of Michael Walzer's Just and Unjust Wars. My thanks and congratulations to Gabby Blum, Ian Scobbie, and Joe Weiler for organizing it, and to NYU for hosting it. I...
In the past twenty years the world of investment arbitration has taken the commercial world by storm. There are over 2,750 bilateral investment treaties and almost every one of them has an arbitration provision. Investment arbitration is now a prominent feature of the arbitration landscape. Just as BITs have proliferated in recent years, so too have free...
