The Language Trainers Group has a great new on-line game: trying to guess what country 16 people with different accents are from. It's called, not surprisingly, Can You Guess Where My Accent Is From? I scored a 28 -- a full 10 points higher than Blake Hounsell, who tipped me off to the game at FP Blog. And yes, I could...
For anyone following the situation in Georgia and US/ Russian relations, there was a very interesting statement and Q&A today from Secretary of State Rice, who is in Brussels for meetings at NATO. Among other things, she announced the creation of a new NATO-Georgia cooperative framework and also discussed the concerns about isolating Russia. Among other topics, she also answered questions about...
I've missed Eric Muller's blogging at Is That Legal? -- but he has obviously put his free time to good use, because his new article on the Supreme Court's decision in Hirabayashi v. United States is sensational. Here is the abstract: This Article presents newly discovered archival evidence demonstrating that government lawyers told a crucial lie to the United States Supreme...
The most famous quote from the founder of the modern Olympic Games is: “The important thing is not to win, but to take part” (L'important n'est pas de gagner, mais de participer). So far, the Beijing experience of the CAS Ad Hoc Division seems to give a new relevance to this Olympic slogan. Indeed, after the first week of competition, the...
John McCain on Guantanamo Bay, during a question-and-answer session with Walter Isaacson: it may be one of the nicest places in the world to live in. Hyperbole or not, shouldn't comments like that disqualify someone from being president? ADDENDUM: This is a pretty good one, too, concerning Russia's invasion of Georgia: My friends, we have reached a crisis, the first probably serious crisis internationally...
Following is a statement that Secretary of State Rice made today in Tbilisi regarding the sirtuation in Georgia, the cease-fire agreement, and next steps. I have also included an excerpt from her Q&A with reporters and highlighted throughout a few parts that I thought were particularly interesting. SECRETARY RICE: Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, as President Bush noted in his statement a couple...
Last October, Col. Morris Davis resigned as chief prosecutor of the military commissions, claiming that Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann had interfered with the prosecutor's office, pressured him to use classified evidence -- requiring sessions to be conducted behind closed doors -- and encouraged the use of evidence obtained through waterboarding. Col. Davis filed a formal complaint at the time, but...
Our friend John Boonstra at UN Dispatch calls attention to a little-used provision of the UN Charter that requires members of the Security Council to abstain from voting on substantive matters when they are a party to a dispute. Here is the text of Article 27(3): Decisions of the Security Council on all other matters shall be made by an affirmative...
The New York Times has posted online the (possibly fraying) cease-fire agreement concerning the conflict in Georgia. At the time of its signing, President Sarkozy had said something to the effect that this is not a document for a lasting peace, but rather just to stop the shooting. Looking at the text, I can see why he wanted to make that clear. ...
According to Interfax, Russia is considering referring the situation in South Ossetia to the ICC. It quotes Russia's Prosecutor General, Yury Chaika, as saying that he "doesn't think setting up a special [international] court is necessary. Complaints and applications from our citizens which will be referred to the International Criminal Court would suffice." That's an interesting statement, given that Russia...
As events move, I fervently hope, to an end to fighting in Georgia, international law discussions of the war will inevitably return to perennial themes - the authority to use force, the role of the Security Council and the Charter, the rationales and precedents offered for and against each side's use of force, and so on. So let me introduce...
With the announcement of a six-point plan for a Georgian cease-fire, attention is shifting to how to construct a durable and equitable peace in the Caucasus. As the parties settle-in for some sort of negotiation, I find it interesting how the ideas about international law and norms are used in the statements of the parties. Here are a couple of examples from a CNN...
