So the financial crisis has definitively moved from being a Wall Street phenomenon featuring a certain amount of European schadenfreude to a global crisis in which European banks are just as involved as American ones. That it is a global crisis and not merely an American one means two things. First, early on in this financial mess, the sense that...
Professor Charli Carpenter (of UMass Amherst Political Science Department) and I had a lovely conversation over the weekend about battlefield robots. Well, actually it was an interview for a project of hers, so she let me do pretty much all the talking. She has now posted some thoughts of her own, in highly interesting, highly recommended (for that small chunk...
One small item in the Biden-Palin debate that has gone largely unremarked in the press is Senator Biden's comment on the US commitment on foreign assistance. From the CNN transcript: IFILL: [...
Thou shalt not incite public curiosity. It is perhaps the most curious of international obligations. But there it is, expressly required in the Geneva Conventions: prisoners of war "shall be protected ...
Along with my co-author, Joshua Newcomer, I've posted a new article on SSRN -- "Political" Commitments and the Constitution. It's forthcoming in the Virginia Journal of International Law, so I expect readers will get a chance to comment on it here at Opinio Juris once it's in print as part of our regular VJIL symposia. But, we'd also welcome comments...
The Seventh Circuit in Osagiede v. United States earlier this month ruled that an attorney's failure to provide information as to the client's Vienna Convention rights may constitute ineffective assistance of counsel. Effective performance by counsel representing a foreign national in a criminal proceeding is reasonable performance “under prevailing professional norms.” ...
Eric Posner, over at VC, remarks on the continuing attention to Carl Schmitt, and indeed the increasing attention to him within the American jurisprudential community: Why do people like me and Sandy Levinson keep talking about the Nazi philosopher Carl Schmitt? Schmitt was skeptical that a parliamentary democracy can handle crises: it can only role over and let the executive act....
I don't watch television, so I wouldn't actually know, but I take it there was some sort of dustup in a Sarah Palin ABC interview in which Governor Palin was asked about the so-called Bush Doctrine. I don't know exactly what the discussion was about, but I did get an email from a friend a little while ago that said,...
This, according to an article in the Guardian, September 3, 2008, from a correspondent in Washington. According to the story: "If there has been a basis upon which you can pursue someone for a criminal violation, they will be pursued," Biden said during a campaign event in Deerfield Beach, Florida, according to ABC. "[N]ot out of vengeance, not out of retribution," he...
I want to join the rest of Opinio Juris in welcoming Tom; I have read Confronting Global Terrorsm and American Neo-Conservatism with great interest and am looking forward to commenting on it. As befits someone who, on some definitions anyway, probably counts as a neo-con, I have some disagreements with the book - starting, unsurprisingly, with the definition of neoconservative...
Let me begin the discussion by addressing one of the most important issues addressed in Farer's book: combating terrorism consistent with the Charter. Farer presents the issue of the permissible options for the United States if it discovers that terrorist organizations or individuals are active in country X and planning an attack on American targets. If the...
... and hoping that the damage is minimal and that everyone is safe, including any OJ readers. Watching the television today caused me to recall a conference I attended a few years ago, a meeting of humanitarian disaster professionals who dealt with developing world disasters ranging from natural disasters to conflict relief. At one session, on natural disasters and, as...
