Dan Drezner's take at Foreign Policy on the latest Pew Research Poll on U.S. foreign policy attitudes uses a more provocative term than "uninformed," but the point is the same. Can the public be "realist" in its attitudes to the world when those attitudes are based on factual assumptions that don't exactly align with reality? Lots of interesting comments...
B. Don Taylor, a former legal officer at the ICTY and a good friend, has argued in the comments to a recent post that although Dr. Karadzic's criticisms of the procedure the Registry used to appoint Harvey may well have merit, Dr. Karadzic's request for certification to appeal the Rule 44 issue did not adequately raise the issue. I disagree...
[This is a guest post by Professor Greg Gordon of the University of North Dakota. Professor Gordon is the Director of the UND Center for Human Rights and Genocide Studies, an expert on international criminal law and a past guest blogger at Opinio Juris.] Earlier this week, Spanish National Court Judge Balthazar Garzon initiated money laundering proceedings against the widow...
I will write on this at greater length in a couple of days after a few of the key parties have made their arguments. For now, I just want to note that the oral proceeding transcripts will be available here. In the Tuesday morning session (which is all that has been posted at the time of this writing), Serbia set out...
With the kerfuffle over the White House gate-crashing gaining all the attention, another flap over gate crashing is flying below the radar. It appears that Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame returned from the dead to meet with Ali Treki, President of the United Nations General Assembly. As reported here: A spokeswoman for Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general,...
Charles Johnson, founder of the conservative blog Little Green Footballs, has announced that he has parted ways with the right-wing in the US. His list of ten reasons is remarkable for its honesty and its perspicacity: 1. Support for fascists, both in America (see: Pat Buchanan, Robert Stacy McCain, etc.) and in Europe (see: Vlaams Belang, BNP, SIOE, Pat Buchanan, etc.) 2....
Americans who defend the legality of the invasion of Iraq almost invariably point to the fact that Britain's Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, also approved the invasion. That argument has always been questionable; rumours have long circulated that Lord Goldsmith did not believe that the invasion was legal, but was pressured by Downing Street into approving it anyway. According to an explosive...
The just-released CFR web publication "Public Opinion on Global Issues" offers one-stop shopping for those looking for public opinion surveys across a range of transnational policy issues. The overview explains how CFR and the Univ. of Maryland consolidated all publicly available opinion polls and provides a few significant findings: The international community confronts a daunting array of transnational threats and challenges...
Several times in the last couple of years I've had the privilege of appearing on panels with Georgetown law professor Vicki Jackson, talking about constitutional comparativism. She is always a pleasure to listen to and engage with on this topic. It's been a hot topic in the last few years, and several OJ'ers have weighed in, including Roger and me....
Let me leave aside for the moment all the leaked memos and stuff. I have a question about Copenhagen that predates all of that. I'm not being snarky - taking on assumption all the climate problems as they have been stated, I do not understand how this exercise manages to overcome the collective action failure problems that have been encountered...
I criticize the Registry regularly, so it's important to acknowledge when it does something right. I blogged a couple of weeks ago about the Registry's indefensible position that Dr. Karadzic's trial had not started, so the defence team was not entitled to any funding until the trial "began" in March. The Registry has now reversed its decision and approved 250...
Where is the Obama administration on the Ottawa Landmines Ban Convention? After some clarifications, it appears that the US is conducting a "broad" review of antipersonnel landmine policy and the Ottawa Convention, while maintaining the previous Bush administration stance on an "interim" basis. This Reuter's story, in the Washington Post, gives some of the ins and outs. Meanwhile, the Cartagena...
