The conventional wisdom is probably correct here, that David Souter's retirement won't make much of a difference to the Court's overall balance. But no two Justices are alike. There will be inevitable differences in style and approach, and on the less prominent questions, the ones mostly off the radar screen, that can lead to different votes. I don't know much...
[ Laura Dickinson is Foundation Professor of Law, Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State University.] It seems that in some quarters, support for international law (combined with a little bit of humor) is enough to get one labeled “so out there” to be unqualified for government service. A few commentators on the right have recently decided to attack international...
For a while there, it looked as if there might be a real fight over Harold Koh's nomination as State Department Legal Adviser. The Republicans have been casting about for a nomination that they could defeat on some issue of principle (that is, over something not involving a nominee's tax returns), along the lines of Lani Guinier's failed nomination...
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has a provocative essay by Brian Weeden critiquing the idea that the U.S. should sign on to a treaty banning the weaponization of space. The author's point is not so much that he thinks there should be unregulated military use of space, but rather whether a treaty is the best way to go about...
In case you haven't seen them already, I wanted to point out that Beth Van Schaack and Hari Osofsky have a couple of posts at IntLawGrrls on yesterday's Koh confirmation hearing....
The Eleventh Circuit earlier this month ruled that Manuel Noriega could be extradited to France following the completion of his sentence in Florida. In Noriega v. Pastrana, Noriega argued that under the Third Geneva Convention he was entitled to automatic and immediate repatriation to Panama as soon as his criminal sentence was complete. However, Section 5 of the...
Is that even possible these days? It seems not, but the Federalist Society is sure doing a nice job in lining up Andrew McCarthy, Scott Horton, Douglas Kmiec, David Luban, Bart DePalma and Steve Vladeck to debate the recent release of the CIA interrogation memos and their content. No one has yet denounced the other in ad hominem attacks and there...
No sooner had I read Peter's thought-provoking post about transparency in arbitration than I received a link to a complete webcast of this month's arbitration before the Permanent Court of Arbitration between the Government of Sudan and the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement/Army over the Abyei region. This appears to be the first videotape/webcast of an arbitration between a state and...
Maybe. In any event, Harold Koh's testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will be webcast live starting around 2:15 (thanks to Mark Shulman for the tip). I predict a very boring hearing where nothing of substance will be asked, and nothing of substance will be offered as an answer either. This should work to Koh's benefit, of course. Boring...
Dave Kopel has a post today at The Volokh Conspiracy in which he dusts off John Yoo's argument in the infamous 14 March 2003 memo that a CIA interrogator prosecuted for torture would be able to invoke the defenses of necessity and self-defense. I am not interested in responding to Kopel's post, which grossly mischaracterizes my position on torture prosecutions...
The National Court has reassigned the case from Judge Garzon to Judge Eloy Velasco. CNN says that "Judge Velasco is thought to have little, if any, experience in these kinds of cases." Apparently, CNN has never heard of The Google, because it took me about 30 seconds to learn that, in January, Judge Velasco relied on Spain's universal jurisdiction law...
Chris Borgen and I have an op-ed in today's Philadelphia Inquirer -- you can access it here -- defending Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh's nomination to serve as the Legal Adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Our inspiration for writing it was Rick Santorum's recent column, which suggested Harold Koh was un-American, and launched a general attack on international law having any...
