In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Recent Posts

29 Aug

My favorite part of the Wall Street Journal's article on ATS litigation, discussed by Ken below, has to be this comment by the lawyer who defends such lawsuits: In assessing liability, a key question can be whether companies assisted a foreign government that was known to violate human rights, says Joe Cyr, a New York lawyer who defends companies against alien...

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29 Aug

The WSJ has a news story (Nathan Koppel, "Arcane Law Brings Conflicts From Overseas to U.S. Courts," Thursday, August 27, 2009) on the rise of ATS suits against corporate defendants. It quotes Curt Bradley, but interestingly (I thought, for an area traditionally dominated by academics), it has more quotes from practicing lawyers, including John Bellinger, Center for Constitutional Rights's Katherine Gallagher,...

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29 Aug

A remark in passing by KJH ("law review editors, I mean you") caused me to recall a question I've had for a while.  Do student law review, or international law review, editors read or know about OJ?  I have asked this question of my own school's international law review editors over the last couple of years, and the answer was...

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28 Aug

The local news in New York and New Jersey is abuzz this morning with unconfirmed rumors that, for the opening of this year's UN General Assembly, Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi is planning to stay in an air-conditioned "Bedouin-style" tent  on the grounds of a residence owned by the Libyan government in Englewood, New Jersey, a suburban town of 30,000. According...

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28 Aug

Like Duncan, I had my first week of public international law. In a brief introductory discussion on customary international law one of the students asked, "How does a practice that has achieved the status of customary international law cease to become customary international law?" It is an interesting question. We spend plenty of time in international law...

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27 Aug

As an American who has lived and received health care in two other industrialized Western countries (New Zealand and Australia), I know first-hand how pathetic American health care really is compared to its foreign counterparts.  Unfortunately, because most Americans know very little about how the rest of the industrialized world provides (vastly superior and much cheaper) health care, conservatives have...

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27 Aug

My friend and former colleague at Auckland, Mohsen Al Attar, has posted two new articles about TWAIL on SSRN.  The first, co-written with Rosalie Moore, is entitled "TWAIL Revisited - The Bolivarian Reconstruction of International Law."  The second, co-written with Vernon Ivan Tava, is entitled "TWAIL Pedagogy - Legal Education for Emancipation." The abstracts are after the jump.  I highly recommend...

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27 Aug

I started teaching my introductory course to international law this week.  I've got nearly 80 upper-level students, which is a pretty good number considering that an equal if not greater number of students had the opportunity this past spring to take international law as a first year elective.  Nor is Temple alone in moving international law into the first year...

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26 Aug

One of my favorite ICL scholars, Guenael Mettraux, recommends precisely that in a recent New York Times op-ed.  Here is the core of his pitch: The Guantánamo detainees pose a similar conundrum today. Trying these men stateside would necessarily require the compromise of long-cherished principles of American law. Yet continuing to hold them without the prospect of a fair trial or...

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26 Aug

I am a big fan of Laura Rozen's work over at The Cable blog on foreignpolicy.com.  She posted a piece late Monday, "Getting to Yes on Middle East Peace Talks," which offers a brief but fascinating peek into the art and science of mediating protracted conflicts -- a topic I have written about here and here....

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