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02 Jul

Humberto Leal is scheduled for execution in Texas on July 7th. A Mexican national, Leal was not notified of his right to consular assistance under the Vienna Convention of Consular Relations. In light of the International Court of Justice's decision in the Avena case (Mexico v. U.S.), Congress is currently working on legislation to bring the U.S. into compliance with its international...

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27 Jun

I am delighted to announce the publication of my book "The Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Origins of International Criminal Law."  The book can be ordered from Oxford University Press here; Amazon should have it (at a whopping $8.78 discount) in the next few days.  Here for the last time is the cover: Once again, I want to thank...

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24 Jun

Earlier today, the U.S. Court of Military Commission Review (CMCR) held in U.S. v. Hamdan that material support for terrorism is a war crime and thus within the jurisdiction of the military commissions.  The decision represents the apotheosis of the US's utterly self-referential approach to international law, because the CMCR managed to reach that conclusion without citing a single non-American...

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23 Jun

More than a decade ago, the U.S. Defense Department's Office of General Counsel (DoD OGC) released a detailed analysis of the way international law would operate to guide U.S. military activity in cyberspace.  It was an impressive effort and is still worth reading today despite all the intervening, and dramatic, changes in the technology and the geopolitical landscape.  At the...

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24 May

[Marty Lederman is an Associate Professor of Law at Georgetown Law. He was was Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel from 2009 to 2010 and an Attorney Advisor in OLC from 1994-2002. This post is cross-posted at Balkinization.] [Slightly updated as noted to reflect valuable reader reactions.] Shortly after the recent military operation against Osama bin...

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19 May

[Harold Hongju Koh is the Legal Adviser, U.S. Department of State.] I write in response to those who have raised questions regarding the lawfulness of the recent United States operation against Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. United States officials have recounted the facts of that well-publicized incident, most recently in the interview of President Obama on CBS News 60 Minutes...

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15 May

The arrest on sexual assault charges of IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Khan (or "DSK" as he's known to the French tabloids) is big news this morning. Most of the main stream media attention (quite naturally) has focused on the salacious allegations themselves and/or DSK's potential presidential ambitions back in France. Here at Opinio Juris, however, I'm sure I was not the...

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07 May

I hope readers have been following the backlash against CUNY's Board of Trustees for its cowardly decision not to award Tony Kushner an honorary degree from John Jay college because one trustee -- with no notice, and giving Kushner no opportunity to respond -- lied about his political beliefs and accused him of being "anti-Israel."  Here is a bit of...

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