Julian beat me to Eric Posner's new Slate article on the legality of drone strikes. I don't agree with everything in it, but I think it's notable that Posner -- echoing his sometime co-author Jack Goldsmith -- rejects the idea that international law permits self-defense against a non-state actor whenever a state is "unable or unwilling" to prevent the NSA...
I'm currently writing an article for the Journal of International Criminal Justice on the legality of signature drone strikes under international humanitarian law and international human rights law. I will link to the article when it's done (two weeks or so), but I couldn't resist posting the following quotes -- the first from the New York Times, describing the Obama...
On September 19, the Supreme Court of Nevada ordered a new evidentiary hearing for Mexican national Carlos Gutierrez on his ability to overcome the State's procedural bars to further consideration of his death sentence. I've posted a copy of the court's order here. Gutierrez was one of 51 Mexican nationals whose convictions and sentences were the subject of the ICJ's Avena decision....
[Beth Stephens is Professor of Law at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey-Camden.] Monday’s oral argument in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, Inc. focused on the search for a coherent limit to the reach of the Alien Tort Statute. The need for some limit is uncontroversial: even the most ardent advocates of human rights accountability agree that not all cases...
[Chimène I. Keitner, is a Visiting Professor of Law at the USC Gould School of Law and Professor of Law, University of California Hastings College of the Law.] Personal jurisdiction ain’t what it used to be. As Justice Ginsburg noted (Tr. at 54), in the age of Goodyear Tire, multinational corporations can’t necessarily be sued everywhere for everything. But Shell’s message...
[William S. Dodge is Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Research at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. From August 2011 to July 2012, he served as Counselor on International Law to the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State, where he worked on the amicus briefs of the United States in Kiobel v. Royal...
[Curtis Bradley is the William Van Alstyne Professor of Law at Duke University.] The Alien Tort Statute (ATS) is one-sentence long, was enacted more than 200 years ago, has essentially no drafting history, and was relatively unknown before the Second Circuit’s seminal Filartiga decision in 1980. As a result, although it is obvious that the ATS was meant to provide the...
I am still digesting the transcript of the Kiobel reargument today, although I can say that nothing in the argument today has changed my view that this brief (which both Ken and I signed) represents the best approach to resolving the case. I will say, however, that nothing in the argument suggested that any member of the Court is considering...
My initial impression of the Kiobel oral argument is that the Supreme Court is going to do its best to do an historical analysis of the ATS and use that history to find ways to limit its scope. It could do so by holding that the ATS does not apply extraterritorially, or that it does not apply unless there is...
Last week, while I was participating in a conference, I received an email from Google with a puzzling subject line: "Subpoena Notice from Google (Internal Ref. No. 257121)." I opened the email, assuming that it was some kind of sophisticated phishing attempt. It wasn't. It was Google informing me -- more than a little cryptically -- that Chevron had subpoenaed...
Since June 2012, there has been a new addition to the international legal blogosphere: Armed Groups and International Law. The blog is edited by Katharine Fortin of Utrecht University and Rogier Bartels at the Netherlands Defence Academy and the University of Amsterdam. The blog's two main purposes are information sharing and community building between individuals and organizations working on issues related to armed groups....
