I know these polls might not reflect a whole lot of deliberation or thoughtfulness, but still, it is amazing to me: Nearly three quarters of Britons think human rights have become a ‘charter for criminals’, a poll has revealed. It showed a strong majority of 72 per cent hold negative views about the role of human rights laws. Only one in six said...
Last month, I was scheduled to attend Cyber Dialogue 2012 - What is Stewardship in Cyberspace? at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs. I was quite excited to attend given the line-up of participants with a truly diverse set of backgrounds and areas of expertise. Unfortunately, despite nearly nine hours in the Philadelphia airport, I never made it...
Daniel Klaidman, the journalist whose June 2012 book "Kill or Capture: The War on Terror and the Soul of the Obama Presidency" looks to be a must-read, has sent in a guest post to Lawfare discussing how the Stephen Preston speech came about and a bit of the inside maneuvering around the succession of speeches by Eric Holder, Harold Koh,...
Dean Paul Schiff Berman has a new book entitled Global Legal Pluralism (Cambridge University Press 2012) that I heartily recommend to our readers. Here's the abstract: We live in a world of legal pluralism, where a single act or actor is potentially regulated by multiple legal or quasi-legal regimes imposed by state, substate, transnational, supranational, and nonstate communities. Navigating these...
Ben Davis sends me this update on the new evidence submitted to the International Criminal Court against the Catholic Church. Today, a survivor-led support group for sex abuse victims, which is under attack by U.S. Catholic officials, submitted to the International Criminal Court (ICC) new and extensive documentation that the organization says shows ongoing child rape by Catholic clergy and continuing...
Former Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla has admitted for the first time that the country's brutal 1976-1983 dictatorship "disappeared" leftist opponents and said babies were kidnapped from their parents. A team of six UN observers has gone to Syria, where despite both sides agreeing to a truce, violence is still raging. South Sudan has accused Sudan of indiscriminate bombing in a dispute...
Those of you who, like me, missed this year's Federalist Society Symposium on National Security can now watch all of the events on-line here. The event was held April 5 in DC and included a morning panel on terrorist-related detentions, interrogations and trials, a lunchtime address by former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, and an afternoon panel on potential cybersecurity...
Moreno-Ocampo's inability to avoid allegations of bias has long haunted his tenure as Prosecutor. It's impossible to forget, for example, photos of him standing next to the Ugandan President, Youweri Museveni, as he announced that he was investigating the situation in Northern Uganda -- an act that Ugandans widely perceived, rightly in light of the OTP's failure to seriously investigate...
China will begin delivering oil ships to Iran in May, two months ahead of a European ban on tankers carrying Iranian crude. Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said in an op-ed that Iran hopes for dialogue and trust from all sides going forward in nuclear talks and that it will be a process, not an event. The Guardian has an article...
Two calls for papers for ASIL events are closing on April 15 and April 20 Second Annual ASIL Research Forum October 20-21, 2012, Athens, GA The American Society of International Law calls for submissions of scholarly paper proposals for the ASIL Research Forum to be held at the University of Georgia School of Law on October 20-21, 2012. The Research Forum, a Society initiative...
Dioncounde Traore will be sworn in as Mali's interim president today and is tasked with pulling the nation in turmoil back on the right track. Syria has said it will comply with its truce deadlines today by halting military activity, but reserves its right to combat terrorist attacks. Kofi Annan says that Iran can be part of Syria's solution. In the wake...
