The bankruptcy of the U.S. military-commissions system is currently on full display in the trial of Abd al-Rahim Al-Nashiri. Readers who can stomach the spectacle of a tortured detainee being prosecuted for imaginary war crimes committed at a time when there was no armed conflict between the U.S. and al-Qaeda anywhere in the world can find excellent coverage of the...
Republican congressman Allan West channeled Joe McCarthy yesterday, telling supporters at a rally that "he's heard" as many as 80 Democratic representatives in the House are members of the Communist Party. When asked to clarify his remarks, he wouldn't name names -- but he said he was referring to the Progressive Caucus. No problem, then....
In 1973, Hans Blix and Jirina Emerson edited the Treaty Maker’s Handbook to help newly emerging States appreciate, post-decolonization, the intricacies of treaty-making as a matter of both domestic and international law. One of the work’s lasting legacies was the inclusion of sample provisions drawn from existing treaties on various treaty topics such as participation, entry into force, reservations, and...
The speech delivered by CIA General Counsel Stephen Preston at Harvard yesterday is important and illuminating, and I agree with Ken the administration should be commended for it. But wow does it raise some troubling questions about how the CIA understands the legal authority for and constraints on its drone operations. There’s too much to unpack in it...
A UN convoy carrying the head of the mission to Libya was targeted while traveling in Benghazi; no one was hurt but this incident raises questions about stability and security in the country. The General Counsel of the CIA, Stephen Preston, spoke yesterday at Harvard Law School about the agency the rule of law, including giving a hypothetical about the covert use...
In honor of Ozzie Guillen, the manager of the Miami Marlins, who was forced to apologize today to Miami's Cuban-American community for saying that he admired Fidel Castro's ability to avoid being assassinated by the U.S. for five decades, who said the following? I believe that there is no country in the world including any and all the countries under colonial domination,...
The European Court of Human Rights is getting a lot of play today with its decision to okay the extradition of Abu Hamza to the US. To much less (read: no) fanfare, it also denied a petition to compel external voting rights in Greek parliamentary elections for Greek citizens living outside of Greece in the case of Sitaropoulos and Giakoumopoulos...
The European Court of Human Rights has decided this morning that the UK can extradite Abu Hamza, a British citizen, and six other men to the US. Profiles of the men can be found here. The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, believes that LRA leader, Joseph Kony, will be captured this year. Turkey has accused Syria of firing across the border,...
Daniel Nexon has a gem of a short review of books by Samuel Barkin and Charles Glaser in the December 2011 edition of Perspectives on Politics. I am enough of an outsider to International Relations theory to have missed the "war on paradigmism". I'm glad to hear that it has apparently been won. The next challenge, according to Nexon: What should we...
The Texas International Law Journal has published its mini-symposium on Karl Chang's article that argues the law of neutrality provides the applicable legal framework for the United States' conflict with al-Qaeda. There are two responses to the article: one by Rebecca Ingber, who is currently a fellow at Columbia Law School; and one by me. Here is the abstract of...
Benn Steil, director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations has an interesting peek at the history of the formation of the World Bank and IMF in a New York Times op-ed. From their inceptions, the World Bank has traditionally had an American President and the IMF a European Managing Director. But why? I had learned in college that...
