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22 Jan

As a gauge of the temperature of the American foreign policy establishment, it is hard to do better than the Council on Foreign Relations.  And that uber-establishment organization has recently released a pretty hard-hitting critique of the Administration's drone strike policy.  It is not a knee-jerk attack, but a substantive policy critique, part of which is that existing laws aren't quite...

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22 Jan

Former Bush State Department Legal Adviser John Bellinger has a complicated op-ed arguing that the U.S. should be prepared to intervene militarily in Syria, even if its intervention is not strictly legal.  His argument is complicated because he rejects the idea that any intervention in Syria now, even with the agreement of the Syrian Opposition, would violate existing international law. The escalating...

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22 Jan

Russia is evacuating its citizens from Syria, which is interpreted as a loss of confidence in President Assad's chances of winning the civil war. The US has circulated a draft UN Security Council Resolution condemning last month's rocket launch in North Korea. The resolution has the support of China and presumably also Russia. A Japanese lawmaker is in Beijing for talks to defuse...

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21 Jan

It was a liberal speech, but also a nationalist one. Obama returned to the citizenship theme of his DNC acceptance speech: My oath is not so different from the pledge we all make to the flag that waves above and that fills our hearts with pride. They are the words of citizens, and they represent our greatest hope. You and I, as...

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21 Jan

A UN report released yesterday entitled Treatment of Conflict Detainees in Afghan Custody: One Year On (report found here, press release found here) claims that Afghan authorities are still torturing prisoners, such as hanging them by their wrists and beating them with cables. A police office in Kabul has been attacked earlier today by Taliban forces, in a second attack on a government building...

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20 Jan

A few days ago, I criticized Judge Pohl's rejection of al-Nashiri's claim that there was no armed conflict between the US and al-Qaeda at the time of the acts alleged in his indictment — such as the attack on the USS Cole in 2000 – thereby depriving the military commission of jurisdiction over those acts.  Judge Pohl's decision relied almost exclusively...

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19 Jan

Bond v. United States is one of those cases that promises both more and less than it seems. At first glance, it seems an important and fascinating case because it is the first time the U.S. Supreme Court will revisit any aspect of the famous 1920 Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.'s decision in Missouri v. Holland.  That decision, arguably the most famous...

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19 Jan

Just a quick entry (it's late here in Tokyo) to note that the Supreme Court is going to hear the case of U.S. v. Bond, which, in effect, revisits the question of Missouri v. Holland and the scope of Congress's power to implement U.S. treaty obligations.  Over at Volokh this past week, Nick Rosenkranz and Rick Pildes have been debating that constitutional...

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19 Jan

The week on Opinio Juris started off on a lighter note with Ken's post on the Obama Administration's response to a petition to build the Death Star. And although the administration's answer encourages readers to  "pursue a career in a science, technology, engineering or math-related field", our comments raised the question of customary inter-stellar law. The pop cultural fun continued later with...

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18 Jan

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi has appeared in a court for the first time since his capture last year, in the western town of Zintan, where he is facing charges related to a visit by an ICC lawyer last year. Jurist has more here. US and ECOWAS troops will support France’s mission in Mali. Armed Groups in International Law has an insightful post on...

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