As Julian notes the Court in Kennedy v. Louisiana ruled that the death penalty for child rape violated the Eighth Amendment. It did so without any reference to international or comparative law or experiences. The focus of the opinion was on a national consensus and the Court's own independent judgment of what the Eighth Amendment requires. Having...
I don't want to step on Roger's turf here, but I can't resist a brief note on today's U.S. Supreme Court decision invalidating a Louisiana law allowing the death penalty for rapists who victimize children under 13. As most of our readers know, the test for determining a violation of the Eighth Amendment turns on "evolving standards of...
It seems like a no brainer that the U.S. should enact into domestic law punishments for "crimes against humanity." The recently created subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing yesterday to hear one-sided testimony on this question. And really, is there any objection to enacting a statute making...
A recent op-ed published in the New York Times suggested that the states of the United States should do just that. Thomas W. Evans, who had been an adviser to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, argued that OPEC's actions violate U.S. antitrust law and artificially raises the prise of gasoline. However, he noted that the act of...
I have blogged recently about the EU's encouraging -- if insufficient -- criticism of Italy's shameful persecution of its Roma population. On Friday, the Council of Europe added its two cents:Europe's top rights body, the Council of Europe, on Friday voiced "deep concern" at a series of recent attacks against the Roma gypsies and immigrants and their treatment in...
No, Virginia, being unanimously acquitted by an international tribunal's trial and appeals chambers doesn't mean very much:Belgium has confirmed that it was investigating Emmanuel Bagambiki, former Governor of Cyangugu during the 1994 genocide, who was acquitted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and who is sought by Rwanda, reports Hirondelle Agency . "The federal prosecutor is looking at the...
The folks at Pew Research have just released a poll highlighting just how popular Barack Obama is in the rest of the world. People around the world who have been paying attention to the American election express more confidence in Barack Obama than in John McCain to do the right thing regarding world affairs. McCain is rated lower than...
Courtesy of Toast.com, the quiz consists of 30 questions -- 20 drawn from the U.S. citizenship test and 10 harder "curveballs." 24 is considered the minimum passing score; I scored, much to my delight, a 26. Can you do better? Hat-Tip: Americablog. ...
I have a guest post up over at IntLawGrrls, discussing my recent symposium essay on Medellin. The post is here (with thanks to Diane Amann) and the essay is up on SSRN here. Here's the precis: Analysis of Medellín is likely to fall into one of the three narratives to have emerged from the arguments of the parties, the...
Okay, in Rome, not Geneva, but the point holds. Following in Duncan's footsteps, I've been teaching here for the month in a Temple Law summer program. On Friday, we had an interesting visit to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, which is headquartered here, with presentations by several lawyers in the agency's legal service. It was interesting stuff. FAO has its...
I doubt it, but this article suggests Afghanistan is considering it as a justification for incursions to chase down Taliban forces. But it is an interesting and "hotly" developing area of international law (See, e.g., Colombia in Ecuador, Turkey into Kurdish Iraq, the U.S. into Syria and Iran, etc.). Interestingly, the doctrine appears to have its most formal articulation...
We at Opinio Juris want to thank once again Haider Hamoudi for guest-blogging with us this past week. For more on the issues he has raised, be sure to visit his blog, Islamic Law in Our Times and read his memoir, Howling in Mesopotamia. We hope he will soon join us again for another guest-blogging stint. ...
