The New York Times Magazine has a great story on celebrity philanthropy. The good news is that, as we all know, celebrities can do a tremendous amount of good in promoting important causes. Publicity and access to power guarantees that their sponsorship of causes can make a difference. But the story also highlights just how self-absorbed and...
The so-called "doomsday" seed vault opened recently in Norway. It's a remarkable venture — and an even more remarkable piece of engineering:"This is a frozen Garden of Eden," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said at the opening ceremony Tuesday, as guests carried the first seed deposits into the icy vault, deep within an Arctic mountain in the remote...
The Southern District of Florida last week rendered an interesting case involving alleged international trafficking of Cuban aliens to Curaçao where they were slave laborers. The case of Licea v. Curacao Drydock Co. focused on whether the case should be dismissed on the grounds of forum non conveniens. Plaintiffs are three Cuban nationals who are now residents of Florida. The...
I've always loved the Billboard Liberation Front's unique brand of civil disobedience, but this time they've outdone themselves: Here's a snippet from the accompanying "Press Release":February 27, 2008 San Francisco, CA The Billboard Liberation Front today announced a major new advertising improvement campaign executed on behalf of clients AT&T and the National Security Agency. Focusing on billboards in the San Francisco area, this...
The Yale Pocket Part has republished a great student note from 1988 by Jill Pryor (now a partner at a law firm in Atlanta) defining the phrase "natural-born citizen." It only took twenty years, but given the uncertainty about John McCain's constitutional eligibility, the topic is now timely. Here is the conclusion: If the eligibility of a presidential candidate...
This conference at UCLA on March 11 addressing the topic of U.S. foreign policy toward rogue states looks really interesting. On March 11, 2008, the Burkle Center for International Relations at UCLA will convene a conference featuring Governor Bill Richardson, Burkle Center Senior Fellows General Wesley Clark (ret.) and Former Foreign Minister to Thailand Kantathi Suphamongkhon and leading scholars,...
How strange it is that the U.S. presidential elections have flipped the usual internationalist/anti-internationalist rhetoric. In his latest speech, Republican candidate Sen. John McCain knocked both of his potential Democratic opponents for their pledge to threaten U.S. withdrawal from the international trade treaty. I will leave it to my opponent to argue that we should abrogate trade treaties, and...
Readers who enjoyed our recent symposium on Eric Posner and Adrian Vermeule's book Terror in the Balance will definitely want to check out Alice Ristroph's review of the book in the new issue of the Green Bag. This is no ordinary review — serious, respectful, dispassionate. Indeed, Alice's bete noire is precisely the tendency, so prevalent in the...
At Prawfsblawg today, my friend — and national-security law expert — Steve Vladeck discusses what the reversal of Mohammed Munaf's conviction means for his Supreme Court case. Here is a snippet:Munaf's habeas petition is one of two brought by U.S. citizens detained in Iraq set to be argued before the Supreme Court later this month (and in which I...
At the heart of the Ecuadoran/ Colombian/ Venezuelan tensions, there is a dispute over the facts that has legal implications as to whether Colombia’s military action was self-defense or anticipatory self-defense (which, as many would see it, would make it aggression). As CNN explains:[Ecuadoran President Rafael] Correa told reporters in Quito that [Colombia’s Presdient Alvaro] Uribe told him the...
As the Ugandan government and its rebel foes the Lords' Resistance Army have inched toward a negotiated end to their 20 year civil war, I've been blogging rather obsessively over the possibility that the ICC arrest warrants would prove decisive in preventing an end to the conflict. But there were always other reasons why a peace deal in Uganda was...
This has the look of a very ugly situation developing down south. President Hugo Chávez yesterday placed Venezuela on a war footing, sending thousands of troops and tanks to the border with Colombia after its neighbour killed a top rebel leader inside Ecuadorean territory. “Mr. Defense Minister, move me 10 battalions to the border with Colombia immediately - tank battalions,”...
