In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Recent Posts

09 Apr

Finally, some good news out of Iraq:An Iraqi judicial committee has dismissed terrorism-related allegations against Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein and ordered him released nearly two years after he was detained by the U.S. military. Hussein, 36, remained in custody Wednesday at Camp Cropper, a U.S. detention facility near Baghdad's airport. A decision by a four-judge panel said Hussein's case falls under...

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09 Apr

It's not often that an NPR show features treaties, but last week, Ira Glass of This American Life, had a fascinating story about the US-Canada International Boundary Commission (listen to Act 1). In short, he recounts a fight between a Bush-appointed commissioner Dennis Schornack and the Justice Department over the application of a series of treaties between the United...

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08 Apr

If you will indulge a serious post about human suffering, I wanted to pass on Harvard Law Professor Bill Stuntz’s wonderful reflections on his struggle with cancer. I think it is appropriate for this blog because he reflects upon human suffering throughout the world, and emphasizes the irony that only those living in privileged, rich countries think they should...

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08 Apr

As this essay in the invaluable Institute for War and Peace Studies argues, a debate over the final location of the ICTY's documentary archives is missing the point. The archive of the ICTY is a vast and invaluable collection, and its holdings will be indispensible for anyone researching or investigating events of the 1990s, in any former Yugoslav republic. But most...

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07 Apr

They're both participants in the reconquista, illegal immigrants as the foot soldiers and now a vodka purveyor as its cartographer. Entertaining little dust-up over this ad from Absolut, depicting (very roughly) Mexico along the lines of its early 19th century boundaries. The ad was targeted at Mexican consumers, "based upon historical perspectives and ...

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07 Apr

Steve Ratner has a nice turn at the "Think Again" column in the latest Foreign Policy (teaser here - let this be a good reason to subscribe). Steve takes on various elements of the popular conventional wisdom on the Geneva Conventions, including the line that they are obsolete:The conventions won’t prevent wars—they were never intended to—but they can and...

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07 Apr

This among his useful suggestions as to how to fix the errors of Bush in anti-terror policy in a Slate column last week:• Work with allies to establish an international legal framework for terrorists. Last week, John McCain called for a "new international understanding on the disposition of dangerous detainees under our control." This is a good idea, not because...

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05 Apr

Russia's lower house of Parliament has passed a resolution denying that the Soviet Union committed "genocide" in Ukraine during the 1930s. The resolution states: "There is no historical proof that the famine was organized along ethnic lines. Its victims were million of citizens of the Soviet Union, representing different peoples and nationalities living largely in agricultural areas of the...

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04 Apr

Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski declared in a speech today that the First Amendment is dead. In a keynote speech entitled “The Late, Great First Amendment” given at a Pepperdine Law Review symposium, Kozinski offered a detailed analysis of the consequences of the Internet age for First Amendment jurisprudence. I’m sure that Eugene Volokh, Jack Balkin and...

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03 Apr

For those interested in international arbitration, the ASIL and the Institute for Transnational Arbitration will be hosting a one-day conference on Wednesday, April 9 in Washington, D.C. The topic is "Soft Law Instruments in International Arbitration." The schedule is available here. Plenty of big names from the world of international arbitration, including David Caron, Michael Reisman, James...

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