If you read one article about the recently released February 2007 ICRC report on U.S. use of torture, read this one by Mark Danner in the current issue of the NY Review of Books. Danner correctly points out that, at least since 2004, the broad contours of the practice of torture by the U.S. government have been publicly known. But...
Our colleagues at International Law Observer asked me to write a post for them in honor of the blog's second anniversary. I was delighted to do so, and the post is now up. It's a long reflection on the pros and cons of international law blogging -- a timely subject, I think, given that I have been cited twice by...
Over at Volokh, Eric Posner has a very interesting post today on the Koh nomination. Here is a snippet: Foreign-law opponents, take heart! Koh is not a cosmopolitan who seeks to sacrifice American sovereignty to foreign gods. He is a liberal who wants to move American law to the left. International law serves as a handy vehicle, to be used or...
Notwithstanding that for many academics, the debate over global governance has shifted away from NGOs, and the debate over NGOs has shifted away from 'representativeness' and 'legitimacy' to 'accountability' in a narrower and more local sense, I suggest in this review essay, in the new AJIL (January 2009), of a 2006 book on NGO accountability, that the questions of legitimacy...
I've always loved the New York Times. I've been reading it since I was a kid. But this comment by the paper's Executive Editor, Bill "Isn't the Iraq War Just Swell?" Keller, makes me want to cancel my subscription: Saving the New York Times now ranks with saving Darfur as a high-minded cause. Yeah, propping up the Gray Lady is just as...
The more things change, the more things stay the same -- at least with this administration: He had become the most vocal opponent of the trial of Guantanamo Bay detainee Omar Khadr, taking on a position more akin to politician than lawyer and launching a two-year public and media campaign that landed him on the front pages of newspapers and inside...
Michael Innes, over at ComplexTerrainLab (where I have been participating in a very interesting discussion with a bunch of historians and political scientists on PW Singer's Wired for War), posts up a comment on a new journal, Critical Studies on Terrorism, and a review of it in another journal, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism. (My own favorite journal on terrorism,...
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a "word cloud" Image from Wordle....
Tod Lindberg, research fellow at the Hoover Institution and editor of Policy Review (and, full disclosure, good friend of mine) has a new article out in Commentary, "The Only Way to Prevent Genocide." The article argues that while "creative diplomacy" can make a difference, in "the end, it may all come down to the willingness of the United States to...
It's not exactly international law, but he was my professor at CU -- one of the very best I ever had -- and, in order to rule in his favor, the jury had to find that a majority of the Regents used his infamous 9/11 essay as a "substantial or motivating factor" in the decision to fire him. So I...
I know I shouldn't let mainstream American conservatives' ignorance of international law bother me, but it does. Today's example: The United States is not a signatory to the International Criminal Court, and Spanish judge and prosecutor Baltasar Garzon is a good reason why. He is considering a lawsuit by lawyers for human rights groups seeking the arrest and extradition of six former...
Read all about today’s blockbuster decision in which a U.S. federal district court held, in light of Boumediene, that detainees held at the U.S. Air Force Base in Bagram, Afghanistan, have a constitutional right to petition for a writ of habeas corpus in U.S. courts. A longer description and link to the 53-page opinion are here. Key caveat:...
