Scholars who believe that the individuals who wrote the OLC memos authorizing torture should be criminally prosecuted -- as I do -- normally cite the Justice Case, decided by the Nuremberg Military Tribunal (NMT) in 1947, for the proposition that a government lawyer can be held criminally responsible for giving erroneous legal advice to his political superiors. Last year, I...
U.S. prosecutors charged the sole surviving Somali pirate from the Maersk Alabama incident, Abduwali Muse, yesterday on charges of piracy, conspiracy to seize a ship by force, discharging a firearm during a ship seizure, conspiracy to commit hostage-taking and brandishing a firearm during a hostage taking. The list of reported charges seems to confirm Eugene Kontorovich's suggestion yesterday in a great post over at...
Professor Ron Slye has a helpful defense of the Koh nomination up at Foreign Policy. His post includes this very useful description of "transnational legal process" noting, importantly, that TLP is a descriptive theory of how law crosses borders. Somehow this fact has eluded much of the MSM discussion: All transnationalism does, in a nutshell, is work to describe and understand...
[Major John C. Dehn is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Law, US Military Academy, West Point, NY. He teaches International Law, and Constitutional and Military Law. He is writing in his personal capacity and his views do not necessarily represent the views of the Department of Defense, the US Army, or the US Military Academy.] First, I express my thanks...
The WSJ Editorial Page takes UN Ambassador Susan Rice to task for claiming that the recent UN Security Council "presidential statement" is legally binding on North Korea. Here is Rice's full statement on this point, I believe. Reporter: Ambassador, there seems to be some debate as to whether there’s any legally binding items in this presidential statement. We talked to one...
TNR discusses here the circumstances of last Friday's intervention by Palestinian doctor Ashraf El Hagog as a representative of UN Watch. The Chair of the then-Prep Com, who has since been elected chair of the Durban II conference, is Najjat al-Hajjaji, representing the government of Libya. Readers might recall that Hagog, along with a group of Bulgarian nurses was...
Yeah, this is much better: On Sunday, Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said on the ABC News program “This Week” that “those who devised policy” also “should not be prosecuted.” But administration officials said Monday that Mr. Emanuel had meant the officials who ordered the policies carried out, not the lawyers who provided the legal rationale. I'm dubious that...
Eric Posner picks up on Marko Milanovic's very interesting comments in response to my question below about the views of non American international lawyers of the ATS. I'm going to pull up interesting responses to my question into this separate post - currently from Marko, Francisco Forrest Martin, and I'll update if others add things to the bottom of the...
Still holding out hope that the Obama administration will prosecute the architects of the torture regime? Stop: The Obama administration opposes any effort to prosecute those in the Justice Department who drafted legal memos authorizing harsh interrogations at secret CIA prisons, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said yesterday. Some analysts and lawmakers have called for investigations and possible prosecution of...
Words of wisdom from Tommy Crocker at The Faculty Lounge: Comments today by Gen. Michael Hayden make clear a further reason why the Obama Administration should name a special prosecutor to investigate potential war crimes in light of everything we know, and have recently learned, about CIA interrogations of "high value al Qaeda detainees." Gen. Hayden has played a vocal role...
Just in case you hadn't had enough of the Koh discussions, here are Stuart Taylor and Evan Thomas in Newsweek. I am in broad agreement with this assessment, for whatever that is worth. I also broadly agree with Jonathan Adler's assessment over at Volokh (below). There, I've said all I want to say in the Koh wars. Well, not quite. Of...
I am fundamentally in agreement with the Bradley-Goldsmith view that Julian and Kevin discuss in the two previous posts. However, I want to post up a related question. It is not so much about the ATS itself or its implications for US law or its politics. It is, rather, about the substance of the legal positions produced in ATS cases...
