I've been critical of the Obama Administration's deceptive approach to war-on-terrorism legal issues (trash your predecessor, but endorse some of his key policies). But I don't have any real criticism of its latest decision to avoid the legal fight over the power to detain enemy combatants in the U.S. The Justice Department, in an abrupt change in policy from the Bush...
Yesterday, the U.S. State Department released the 2008 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices -- colloquially referred to as the Annual Human Rights Report. As a matter of law, it is a report by the State Department to the United States Congress. The mandate grew from a requirement of congressional review of foreign assistance to a more comprehensive summary of...
Following our recent switch to a new server, we have also changed our email subscription service at Opinio Juris. On the lower right toolbar you will find a widget under "register/logon/contact" that will permit you to "sign up for email alerts and updates." The email service by Feedburner will then give you the option to sign up for an email...
I wanted to flag for readers an on-line discussion that we are planning for next Monday-Wednesday, March 2-4. We will be pleased to host Richard Gardiner (University College London) for a discussion of his book, Treaty Interpretation. In addition to comments by the regular contributors, we will have several distinguished guest bloggers, all of whom know a thing or two...
To read the accounts of detention conditions at Guantanamo this week coming from the latest DOD review on the one hand, and detainee lawyers on the other, you’d think the reporters had visited not just different prisons, but prisons on different planets. Report #1 is the product of President Obama’s executive order of January 22, charging the Defense Secretary...
The Sixth Circuit last week rendered an important amended opinion in O'Bryan v. Holy See addressing the question of whether the Holy See could be sued for its role in the clergy sexual abuse scandal. The decision is fascinating and should be quite controversial. As an initial matter it is worth pondering the essential conclusion of the Court: every...
In connection with some work I am doing on Lincoln and the ethics of war in the Second Inaugural, I have been interested in Lincoln's famous phrases in the Address that the "prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully," and others that bind north and south in the causes, and responsibility for slavery...
A few months ago, I mentioned in the comments to my now-infamous grape soda post that although I have no ethical qualms about advising Dr. Karadzic, I would not have defended Hitler if he had lived to see the inside of an Allied courtroom. That statement led to a number of pointed -- and understandable -- criticisms, such as this...
I have posted to SSRN an article I recently published in the Oregon Review of International Law, entitled Imagining Sovereignty, Managing Secession:The Legal Geography of Eurasia’s "Frozen Conflicts." This article was written for a symposium on law and geography at the University of Oregon Law School that was organized by Hari Osofsky (of IntLawGrrls). I use my article to argue that...
My apologies for the light posting lately. Getting settled in Melbourne -- and preparing to teach Australian criminal law -- has been very time consuming. My new email address is kheller@unimelb.edu.au. Feel free to write! I'll be back to posting regularly soon. In case you just can't wait that long -- hi, mom! -- here is a link to an hour-long...
The Washington Post has an interesting story in the Sunday, February 22, 2009, edition (A16) by its longtime UN reporter, Colum Lynch, "With Rivals in Key Posts, U.S. Faces Hurdles at U.N." The article points out that many key UN posts are occupied by countries, and often individuals, hostile to the United States. The General Assembly, for example, is headed by...
Again, this news is not exactly shocking: The Obama administration has told a federal judge that military detainees in Afghanistan have no legal right to challenge their imprisonment there, embracing a key argument of former President Bush’s legal team.In a two-sentence filing late Friday, the Justice Department said that the new administration had reviewed its position in a case brought by...
