As the BBC reports here, the DR Congo parliament has passed an amnesty law for "acts of war" committed by militia in the eastern provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu. Although it looks aimed to assist the ongoing peace process within the DRC, the granting of an amnesty for only DR nationals (foreign fighters are not included) and then...
I continue to read stories of law firms who are encouraging their associates to take a paid leave-of-absence next year. As reported here, Skadden is offering associates $80,000 to take a year off. Morrison & Foerster reportedly will pay incoming associates approximately $85,000 if they will defer their start date until January 2011. Many other firms, including...
I was intrigued by Julian's post on Andrew McCarthy's latest screed for National Review Online, so I read what McCarthy had to say. His argument boils down to this: (1) the Obama administration argues in Demjanjuk that torture is a specific-intent crime; (2) Yoo and Bybee argued in the infamous OLC memos that torture is a specific-intent crime; (3) the...
Yes it has! At least according to Andrew McCarthy, who argues in this National Review article that the Obama administration's brief in a case seeking to uphold its decision to deport Demjanjuk adopted the same narrow interpretation of the U.S. torture statute's requirement of specific intent as the much-vilified Bybee/Yoo memos. ...
With leaks and rumors flying fast and furious (and uncomfirmable) in D.C. this week about what the Administration is likely to decide to do with the remaining Gitmo detainees, it’s no surprise the detention debate is again heating up. If you haven’t seen it already, take a look at Lindsay Graham and John McCain’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal...
I've just posted a piece I did for Peggy's (great) Missouri v. Holland conference last year, entitled The Elusive Foreign Compact. Granted I'm weeks (if not months) behind other participants in getting my contribution posted (see, e.g., here and here). Hopefully, however, this is a case of better late than never. For those who might be interested, here's the abstract: This symposium essay identifies...
Steve Charnovitz has this interesting post at the IELP Blog about a joint statement on the swine A(H1N1) flu virus issued by the FAO, WHO, WTO, and OIE (extra credit to those of you already on to the last one: the World Organization for Animal Health). Steve quite plausibly challenges the WTO's authority to make this kind of pronouncement as...
Invoking the legacy of Nuremberg, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) came out yesterday in support of prosecuting members of the Bush administration responsible for waterboarding. His position on prosecutions is interesting in its own right, but I want to use his comments for a different purpose -- to plug a collection of letters that his father, Thomas Dodd, wrote to his...
The "beautiful game" is what Pele calls soccer (yes, I know, "football" to the rest of the world besides the US). On April 25th, diplomats from the UN, including the Secretary-General, set aside the great game of diplomacy to play a game of soccer at New York's Chelsea Piers to support the non-governmental organization Play31. Play31's website explains that: Play31 was...
It has gone all but unnoticed in the U.S. but Russia has declared victory in its fight against Chechen rebels. Chechnya had become a byword for a place of chaos and random violence perpetrated by all sides, especially since the first Chechen War of 1994-1996. But a recent report by the Times of London concerning Russian black operations in the...
William Ranney Levi's paper on interrogation techniques, Interrogation's Law, is forthcoming in Yale Law Journal, but is up at SSRN. Here is the abstract: Conventional wisdom states that recent U.S. authorization of coercive interrogation techniques, and the legal decisions that sanctioned them, constitute a dramatic break with the past. This is false. U.S. interrogation policy well prior to 9/11 has allowed...
University of Iowa law professor Mark Osiel - an old friend of mine and someone well known to many of us, particularly for his books and writing on mass atrocities - has a new book out, The End of Reciprocity: Terror, Torture, and the Law of War (Cambridge 2009). I've read it at pretty high speed - looking for some...
