Professor Charli Carpenter (of UMass Amherst Political Science Department) and I had a lovely conversation over the weekend about battlefield robots. Well, actually it was an interview for a project of hers, so she let me do pretty much all the talking. She has now posted some thoughts of her own, in highly interesting, highly recommended (for that small chunk...
It's about time: The American Psychological Association has notified President Bush of a significant change in the association’s policy that limits the roles of psychologists in certain unlawful detention settings where the human rights of detainees are violated. The new policy is in response to actions that have occurred at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at so-called CIA...
It's official. President Bush has signed the Child Soldiers Accountability Act: The Child Soldiers Accountability Act makes it a federal crime to recruit knowingly or to use soldiers under the age of 15 and permits the United States to prosecute any individual on US soil for the offense, even if the children were recruited or served as soldiers outside the United...
One small item in the Biden-Palin debate that has gone largely unremarked in the press is Senator Biden's comment on the US commitment on foreign assistance. From the CNN transcript: IFILL: [...
These people have no shame: Pentagon prosecutors are asking a military judge to reverse himself and reassemble the jury that convicted Osama bin Laden's driver at Guantánamo, seeking to overturn a sentence that could make the first war court convict eligible for release by New Year's Eve. At issue is a decision at the first U.S. war crimes tribunal since World War...
Two weeks ago I was in Houston for a conference at South Texas College of Law organized by Geoff Corn entitled Law, Ethics and the War on Terror (more on that in another post). While there I had the pleasure of meeting Amos Guiora. As many readers of this blog probably know, Amos teaches at S.J. Quinney College of Law,...
Friends and readers of Opinio Juris pass along the following conference announcements from Southern Methodist University/Dedman Law School (11/7: "The Rise of Transnational Networks") and Washburn University Law School (11/13-14 "Rule of Law and the Global War on Terrorism: Detainees, Interrogations, and Military Commissions"). They both look terrific (one even features one OJ blogger and several OJ alums!) so check...
Sarah Palin in last night's debate: America is in a position to help. What I've done in my position to help, as the governor of a state that's pretty rich in natural resources, we have a $40 billion investment fund, a savings fund called the Alaska Permanent Fund. When I and others in the legislature found out we had some millions of dollars...
I think so, even though it's not obviously consistent with the requirement restricting presidential eligibility to "natural born" citizens. I make the case in this essay, just posted as part of a symposium on McCain's constitutional eligibility (in light of his Canal Zone birth) at the Michigan Law Review's online First Impressions (with other contributions from Jack Chin, Larry Solum, Daniel Tokaji,...
I think it’s over. As is true with notational wars, it takes another, more serious threat to take care of the displacement. The end isn’t in the way of armistice or surrender. The wars on drugs and crime continue to be fought under more prosaic headings, but they no longer have a hold on the national imagination. And in the...
Thou shalt not incite public curiosity. It is perhaps the most curious of international obligations. But there it is, expressly required in the Geneva Conventions: prisoners of war "shall be protected ...
Who would have thought that the US would emerge as the most committed supporter of the ICC in Darfur? From the "Hague Invasion Act" to protecting the Court from the spinelessness of its erstwhile supporters, the UK and France: "If asked—if forced to vote today—the United States, even if it was 191 countries against one, would veto an Article 16 [resolution],"...
