Controversy continues to surround John Yoo and the memos he wrote while a Justice Department lawyer that were used as the legal basis for torture in U.S. interrogation operations. Under the circumstances, I thought it appropriate to reprint here an email recently circulated to UC Berkeley faculty, administration and students by Dean Christopher Edley of Berkeley Law School. (Happy to...
Cross-Posted at Balkinization Following my testimony last month to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security on military commissions and the like, Senator Kyl (R-AZ) was kind enough to send along some follow-up questions to answer. His first follow-up question was one of the same as one he’d posed in the hearing itself: What if any empirical...
Yesterday, the Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission awarded final damage awards for the fifteen partial and final awards on liability it rendered between July 1, 2003 and December 19, 2005. You can access the damages decisions for Eritrea here, and those for Ethiopia here. According to the AP, both sides will accept the awards, but neither is apparently thrilled with...
The Journal of International Law and International Relations, published by the University of Toronto, is actively seeking submissions. Here is their call for papers: Call for Submissions Volume 6, Issue 1 (Fall 2009) Deadline for Submissions: September 21, 2009 The Journal of International Law and International Relations (JILIR) invites submissions from scholars of both International Law and International Relations for its Fall 2009 issue....
A few weeks ago, a regular reader asked why we don't do more with private international law/conflicts of law matters here at Opinio Juris. I'm not sure I had a good answer. Certainly, those who follow these topics already have some resources to turn to, most notably the European-based Conflicts of Law.Net blog. But these are important topics, and those who follow international...
Here is the official call for papers for the 2010 ASIL Lieber Society Military Prize essay. To enter a paper, you do not have to be a member of ASIL, but you do have to be a member of your "nation's regular or reserve armed forces." This particular essay contest, in other words, is for military personnel. The prize is...
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative frequently does impressive work; witness the U.S. WTO victory this week over China. But when it comes to openness and transparency, USTR's efforts do not have the same shine; this is an agency notorious for its resistance to traditional inter-agency procedures (e.g., the C-175 procedure), let alone opening up its work to the public eye. So, I...
The WSJ has a very important (and certain to be much debated) story today on the front page, "A Global Surge in Tiny Loans Spurs Credit Bubble in a Slum," WSJ, A1, Thursday August 13, 2009. Also see the follow on stories, "Group borrowing leads to pressure," which is about the problem that when you use 'peer pressure' rather than...
I spent last week on a beach in Florida (because everyone from Philly vacations in Florida in August). I had left all my work at home, and was settling into a crime novel, David Hewson's The Sacred Cut, about a serial killer loose in my favorite city--Rome. It was a light read, so I was willing to go along with...
The ever useful and interesting Crimes of War Project website has posted a useful background web article on the debate in the General Assembly over the scope and status of 'responsibility to protect' (R2P). I've blogged at OJ about this before, citing to an Economist article summarizing the debate and some other things. The COW report, by Katherine Iliopoulos, can...
I know how much our readers like pirates, so I thought I would share the State of Victoria's remarkably loony criminal statutes on the subject. Here is s70B of the Crimes Act 1958: A person commits a piratical act if...
In case this is of interest to Opinio Juris readers, I want to point out that I have a new essay posted to SSRN entitled Hearts and Minds and Laws: Legal Compliance and Diplomatic Persuasion. Here's the abstract: This essay, written for the South Texas Law Review’s Ethics Symposium, considers the role of international legal argument in the war on terror...
