Cross-posted at Balkinization Earlier this term, the Supreme Court granted certiorari to decide the latest issue in the sad case of the Uighurs still held at Guantanamo Bay after having been cleared of “enemy combatant” status by both Bush and Obama Administrations. U.S. treaty obligations restricting the ‘refoulement’ of individuals to countries where they’re likely to face torture have effectively...
[caption id="attachment_11525" align="alignleft" width="68" caption=" "][/caption] [Larry Johnson is an adjunct professor at Columbia Law School. From 2006-2008, he served at the United Nations Headquarters as the Assistant-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs.] Professor Michael J. Glennon in his post warned American policy-makers to be wary of a “time bomb” that could explode in May – the adoption of a vague, new crime of aggression...
[caption id="attachment_11521" align="alignleft" width="120" caption=" "][/caption] [Anthony Clark Arend is a Professor of Government and Foreign Service at Georgetown University]. When the Obama Administration came into office over a year ago, it was faced with a daunting task. The previous Administration had run rough-shot over international law dealing with the use of military force. A man that would be Attorney General would call...
[caption id="attachment_11512" align="alignleft" width="120" caption=" "][/caption] [Michael J. Glennon is Professor of Law at The Fletcher School at Tufts University] The article addresses a question that is particularly important for the United States. The Obama Administration has begun to express a renewed interest in the International Criminal Court (ICC), after almost a decade of distance between the Court and the United States....
The wide-ranging book, which is edited by Carsten Stahn and Larissa van den Herik and published by Cambridge/TMC Asser, is well worth checking out. Here is the table of contents: Part I. The Influence of Scholars and Practitioners on the Development and Conceptualization of International Criminal Law: 1. 'Satires of circumstance': some notes on war crimes trials and irony...
At least according to Dominic Hughes, a BBC reporter who obviously can't be bothered to know what he's talking about: Perhaps not surprisingly Radovan Karadzic has been a reluctant participant in this trial. The former leader of the Bosnian Serbs has appeared just a few times, regularly boycotting the process. Apparently, "once" now qualifies as "regularly." Good job, BBC! ADDENDUM: Hughes also claims that...
My new Weekly Standard essay - although “polemic” is probably closer to it. And thanks, Julian, for the plug below! Well, regular readers have been hearing about this piece for a while, and I have posted various arguments from it (concerning targeted killing and Predator drones and the CIA and armed conflict and self-defense, and my general concern that the...
McGill University law students have started a new blog about international law, Legal Frontiers. Their official launch post states: The goal of Legal Frontiers is to create a scholarly, social network where students interested in International law can identify key issues and challenges; test new theories; and draw attention to important causes, cases or alternative points of view. Having been inspired...
Both Humblelawstudent and Stuart Taylor have criticized my previous post. Both misunderstand the federal torture statute and the concept of torture in important -- and unfortunately all too common -- ways, so it is worth explaining their errors in a separate post. Let's begin with HLS. He claims that, contrary to my assertion, "the statute requires the interrogator to actually...
The BBC reports: The European Court of Justice has ruled that Israeli goods made in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank cannot be considered Israeli. This means goods made by Israelis or Jews in the West Bank cannot benefit from a trade deal giving Israel preferential access to EU markets. At first glance, this seems like the correct result, especially given the...
Our own Ken Anderson is one of the most knowledgeable and thoughtful legal scholars on the question of targeted killings by the United States. And he has noted here and the Volokh Conspiracy, he has developed a complex analysis of the U.S. policy toward targeted killings, which grounds such killings in the international law of self-defense rather than the law...
David Luban and Stuart Taylor are having an interesting exchange at Balkinization over whether the CIA's use of waterboarding qualifies as torture under the federal torture statute, 18 USC 2340. Luban accuses Taylor of embracing "the fundamental trick used by the torture lawyers: pretending that the legal definition of 'torture' is something technical rather than 'colloquial'," when...
