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Flying around on various airplanes, I've been reading a couple of books on topics in legal history that I've found enjoyable and intellectually profitable.  One is Stephen Neff's Justice in Blue and Gray: A Legal History of the Civil War. I have benefitted greatly from Professor Neff's earlier books in international law history, War and the Law of Nations and The Rights and Duties of Neutrals, and the Civil War book is no exception.  Professor Neff (whom I had the pleasure of meeting earlier this summer as he is visiting at George Washington this term) is one of the most graceful writers in the field - he reads much less like a law professor; he writes as a sophisticated historian writing for a sophisticated but not specialized audience.  He wears his vast learning lightly and without pedantry. The second book is one that arrived as a review copy from Oxford, Mark Weston Janis' America and the Law of Nations 1776-1939.  Professor Janis is likewise an elegant and fluid writer, and, just having finished this not-too-long book, I'm enthusiastic.  (It is usefully accompanied by his earlier book, which I read back when it came out in 2004, The American Tradition in International Law: Great Expectations, which ran up through 1914.) I am not an expert in US foreign relations law, let alone its history, and both of Professor Janis' books opened my eyes to a great deal of background.  The new volume helps frame the history, finally, as it leads up to the era of the United Nations.  It does so by ranging from international law's place in US 19th century legal opinions and diplomatic writing to the role of incipient Wilsonian international organizations - rise and collapse - up through WWII.  Excellent book, congratulations to Professor Janis.

[Austen Parrish is a Professor of Law and Vice Dean at Southwestern Law School.  His scholarship focuses on extraterritoriality and the uses of domestic law and courts to resolve transboundary challenges.] The decision is yet a day old, and already much has been said about Morrison.  As Julian notes, there is a lot to ponder in the case.  But some quick...

The Times and others are reporting that current Acting Head of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) at the Department of Justice, David Barron, will be leaving his post this summer to head back to his professorship at Harvard Law School. (OLC rose to national prominence during the last administration as the home of John Yoo and colleagues, who...

[Margaret V. Sachs is the Robert Cotten Alston Professor of Law at the University of Georgia School of Law and an expert on securities law] The Supreme Court yesterday issued its decision in Morrison v. National Australia Bank, its first ever on the international reach of Section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5. Justice Scalia wrote for the Court, with additional...

U.S. courts have long struggled with questions about the extraterritorial scope of U.S. federal law.  Many U.S. laws regulating business activities, most notoriously antitrust law, have been interpreted to apply to conduct outside U.S. territory, even by foreign nationals. And this all has been a constant irritant to foreign nations, who have sometimes complained about the expansive, sometimes imperialistic, application...

That’s a remarkable statement, but it actually is true. Yesterday the Supreme Court in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project addressed the question of whether a federal statute criminalizing the provision of “material support” to terrorist organizations was constitutional. A humanitarian NGO group wanted to train members of two terrorist organizations, the PKK and the LTTE, to become more...

The American Society of International Law has an active International Economic Law (IEL) Interest Group. Most notably, it holds a biennial conference geared to a common IEL theme, with the papers presented then collected and published in some form, including THE POLITICS OF INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC LAW, Tomer Broude, Amy Porges and Marc L. Busch eds., Cambridge University Press (forthcoming 2010);...

Cross-posted at Balkinization Nothing like summertime to catch up on a little light reading I spent too little time with during the semester. So especially after being re-energized at this year’s American Constitution Society Convention (where I did a panel with Gene Fidell and others far more interesting than I on military commissions vs. federal courts, and got treated to...

Dapo Akande has an important post today at EJIL: Talk! that asks, as he puts it, "what exactly was agreed in Kampala on the crime of aggression?"  I think this paragraph is particularly important: The opt out provision is the most confusing aspect of the aggression amendments. Who exactly  is required to opt out? Once the requisite number of...