Have you worked on post-conflict justice issues? Have you been part of a rule of law project in a conflict zone? If so, you may be of help to our colleague Professor Elena Baylis (Univ. of Pittsburgh), who is working on a really terrific empirical project on post-conflict justice. Here is the information from Elena which includes eligibility...
Assume that a U.S. agency modifies its interpretation of a federal statute to respond to an adverse WTO decision. In so doing, consistent with the Charming Betsy doctrine, its interpretation is brought into conformity with WTO jurisprudence with respect to one stage--the investigation stage--of the administrative proceeding. But the agency does not alter its interpretation of the federal...
The following is a guest-post written by Orde Kittrie, a professor at ASU's law school, and Sandy Spector, the deputy director of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. They very much want input from OJ's readership, so please post your thoughts. Our thanks to Orde and Sandy for contributing the post! Seven years after A.Q. Khan publicly confessed to...
Critics of the Security Council's decision to refer the situation in Libya to the ICC normally argue that the referral denies Gaddafi the option of going into exile instead of fighting to the death. That may or may not be true -- as I've noted previously, Max Boot's reliance on Charles Taylor's prosecution to make that argument fudges the actual...
On paper, courts-martial are far more fair than military commissions -- the substantive law they apply is superior, and their rules of evidence and procedure are designed to protect defendants, not ensure convictions. Unfortunately, a recent McClatchy investigation indicates that literally hundreds of courts-martial might have relied on evidence that was unreliable and even fabricated by an unethical forensic scientist...
Tomorrow, the Center for International and Comparative Law (CICL) of St. John's University School of Law will have its inaugural symposium. Peggy and I are CICL's Co-Directors, and we are looking forward to what we hope will be a great kick-off. The symposium, entitled Challenges to International Law, Challenges from International Law: New Realities and the Global Order, is co-sponsored by...
The UN Security Council's approval of the no-fly zone over Libya serves to answer the thorniest jus ad bellum questions, but there are also jus in bello questions that need to be answered. Most importantly, what kind of conflict is this? Before the UN became involved, the conflict was clearly a conflict "not of an international character" (NIAC) between...
I wanted to call readers' attention to an upcoming web seminar on Libya held by Harvard's Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research. The Program's web seminars are always excellent, and this one -- which features Luis Moreno-Ocampo and Nicholas Burns -- shapes up to be superb. Here are the details: On Tuesday, April 5, 2011, the Program on Humanitarian...
My colleague Anne Orford has a fascinating contribution today to the official blog of the London Review of Books questioning the universality of the supposedly universal international law that underlies the Security Council's authorization of military action in Libya. Here is a taste: In 1954, Carl Schmitt bemoaned the destruction of European international law in the 20th century. According to...
I don't have anything of my own to add to the very instructive debate underway over Congressional authority and war powers, and actions authorized by the Security Council under Chapter VII. However, to go with the terrific interventions by Michael Ramsey and others, I wanted to flag Michael Glennon's 1991 AJIL article on this topic, which he has now put...
[Rachel Davis is Legal Advisor to the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Business and Human Rights] On March 24, the UN released a much-anticipated set of Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights. The Guiding Principles seek to provide for the first time an authoritative global standard for preventing and addressing the risk of adverse human rights impacts...
In previous posts I’ve argued that the U.S. intervention in Libya requires congressional approval under the Constitution’s original meaning and that there’s no longstanding uncontested precedent that would warrant departure from that meaning. Here I’ll consider the significance of UN Security Council Resolutions 1970 and 1973, calling for a cease fire by the Libyan government and authorizing nations to use...
