As has been widely reported, new Australian PM Kevin Rudd has promised to sign the Kyoto Protocol and remove the country's 550 troops from Iraq. Good news on both fronts — as is a third promise that has received less media attention: a formal apology to Australia's aboriginal population for the many historic injustices they have suffered:Mr Rudd's pledge...
Today's WaPo has this lengthy feature on Bono and his humanitarian politicking. It's a Style section piece, tending to puffery. But there's some interesting information here which (even for those of us who mostly missed him as a musician) makes clear that he has to be taken seriously. Like the fact that he has 75 full-time staffers...
The United Nations Committee Against Torture has issued a statement condemning some uses of tasers as a form of torture that violates the U.N. Convention Against Torture. I don't have a link to their report, and I would be curious to see their analysis. Which kinds of taser use constitutes torture? Or is tasering something that automatically violates...
The ICC is standing tough in Uganda: The International Criminal Court ruled out Thursday canceling arrest warrants for Ugandan rebel commanders, saying the rebel leaders and not the warrants are the obstacle to peace. "It is time to marginalise, isolate and arrest individuals sought by the court. The international community must give them no support," ICC Deputy Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said in...
The blogosphere has a new member: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran. He doesn't write many posts — "personal musings," as he calls them — but the comments section has been quite active. And quite critical, as the Guardian (UK) notes in an article today:Somewhat gleefully, the reformist newspaper Etemad reported yesterday that some respondents were venting their...
The New Yorker has an interesting article on how the Internet is changing the way we think about buying and selling information. The article argues that: We have clearly reached a new point in the history of text production. On many fronts, traditional periodicals and books are making way for blogs and other electronic formats. But magazines and books still...
According to Reuters, prosecutors in Paris have dismissed a claim against Donald Rumsfeld for the abuses at Abu Ghraib:The Paris prosecutors' office has dismissed a suit against Donald Rumsfeld accusing the former U.S. defense secretary of torture, human rights groups who brought the case said on Friday. The plaintiffs, who included the French-based International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (FIDH) and...
Ofer Eldar of Weil, Gotshal has posted a new essay to SSRN, entitled Vote Trading in International Institutions, forthcoming the the European Journal of Interntional Law. It sounds interesting; here is the abstract:There is evidence that countries trade votes among each other in international institutions on a wide range of issues,including the use of force, trade issues and elections of...
The U.S. Supreme Court has decided to consider the constitutionality of a handgun ban in the District of Columbia under the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment. This will be a blockbuster case that will keep Eugene Volokh even busier for the next few months. As with the interpretations of other constitutional provisions, the Second Amendment could be placed with...
Mary Dudziak has an interesting post today at Legal History Blog that discusses why Brian Leiter's citation rankings underestimate the scholarly impact of legal historians. One of the primary reasons, she explains, is that the study is confined to Westlaw's JLR database:What does this miss? Leading scholars will have an impact that ranges beyond their fields and beyond their...
In June, I blogged about evidence presented at a New South Wales Coroner's Court indicating that, contrary to the longstanding position of the Indonesian and Australian governments, Indonesian troops murdered five journalists in Balibo on October 16, 1975, the first full day of Indonesia's invasion of East Timor. Last week, the deputy coroner in New South Wales officially concluded that the...
The Harvard Law Review Supreme Court Review is just out and there is a good summary of Massachusetts v. EPA available here. They argue that the case signals further movement away from Chevron deference and the presidential control model. Massachusetts v. EPA is certainly significant because the Court entered the public debate on global warming and because the...
