(I fear wearing out my welcome at Opinio Juris and wearing out its readers' patience with so many posts on battlefield robots. So I will post this and one more short one, and then move on to some other topics.) Among the reasons why the US military seeks to develop battlefield robots are (as noted in my first post on...
I rarely agree with Public Citizen, but I think they have a point when they argue that the United States should reveal the details of its multi-billion dollar settlement agreement with the European Union over compensation for failing to comply with the WTO Appellate Body US-Gambling decision. (Hat tip: IELP). This from the Public Citizen website: The Bush...
Everyone loves microfinance. The Wall Street Journal editorial page is super enthusiastic, but so is the World Bank, so are all those private equity kids who now want to do politically progressive 'venture philanthropy' with their gazillions, and so is Natalie Portman, peering winsomly from the cover of the NYT Magazine a couple of months ago. Muhammad Yunus...
1 In my last post about battlefield robots, I quickly breezed through the ethical and legal priors that technology would go through before reaching the fundamental issues of autonomous battlefield robots - autonomy in decisionmaking in the use of weapons on the battlefield. Leaving aside the questions of exactly how that can be achieved as a matter of actual program...
The Root over at Slate ran this piece on Monday about fistula and its devastating impact on the lives and health of women in the developing world: How can it be, in this day and age, that 500,000 women a year die in childbirth? But it's true. The World Health Organization estimates that 1,600 women die every day from...
Now that the hiring season is over, I wanted to invite our readers to send me an email with any information regarding new and lateral international law professor hires. When you email me please include in the subject line "Law Professor Hires." A fairly comprehensive list of all 2008 entry-level hires is here and a fairly comprehensive list of all...
I understand that Opinio Juris will be hosting a discussion of Benjamin Wittes' new book, Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice in the Age of Terror (Penguin 2008) when it is released for distribution on June 19. That is a very good thing to do. I have heard Ben present material from that book and...
Over at National Security Advisors, our colleague Dave Glazier has a superb post on whether the Gitmo defense attorneys are responsible for the ills of the military commissions, as the Wall Street Journal's far-right editorial page seems to believe. Here's the intro:The Wall Street Journal published a scathing editorial today blasting the military and civilian defense attorneys it portrays...
The June 2008 issue of Esquire magazine has a feature piece on John Yoo by John H. Richardson, plus an on-line transcript of part of Richardson's interview and an autobiographical sketch by Yoo himself. Although framed as a cautionary tale, the article clearly seeks to humanize Yoo. The reader gets a view of Yoo the professor, questioning...
Many of us who work in the areas of laws of war and armed conflict have been watching the development of technology because, if history is any guide, changes in technology are a big, quite possibly the biggest, long-term, historical driver of changes in the laws of war. The development of the musket, cross-bow, airplane, machine gun, and so...
What happens if a mother wrongfully removes a child from his habitual residence because of fears that the child will be abused by his father? In such circumstances can the mother flee the country with the child consistent with the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction (HCCAICA). Those are the questions raised by the...
Any American who has ever watched the British Commons debates on TV cannot help sighing in embarrassment and shame at the sheer inarticulateness of our American counterparts in the House and Senate. Wit and intelligence are not even at issue; successfully stringing together a subject and predicate, and to do so in less than a quarter hour, is. ...
