As President Obama prepares to head up to New York for the UN General Assembly meetings, which this year are focused around the 10 year anniversary of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), some stories are starting to appear in the papers about the UN and US relations. Colum Lynch, for example, the Washington Post's UN beat reporter, has an article asking...
Steve Vladeck has been having a fascinating debate with Ben Wittes and Bobby Chesney about the merits -- or lack thereof -- of Sen. Lindsey Graham's proposed "Terrorist Detention Review Reform Act," which Wittes and Chesney support and Steve opposes. Steve doesn't need my help in the debate, which I think he's clearly winning. But I couldn't let one point...
The draft Resolution of Ratification for the New START treaty approved last week by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is now up on Senator Richard Lugar's webpage. It contains all sorts of required certifications, reports, and briefings. I can't tell if any of it is really significant by way of constraint. (Lugar claims in his press release that the required...
Alan Feuer has a very interesting article in today's NY Times about the Analytic Unit of the NYPD's Intelligence Division. Feuer piece explains To bolster counterterrorism operations after 9/11, the Police Department expanded its Intelligence Division — run by David Cohen, a 30-year veteran of the C.I.A. — with detectives who had mainly spent their careers chasing street gangs, drug lords...
OK, I never thought I'd write a post tying international arbitration, chess federation elections, and post-Soviet politics together. Nor did I think that I'd follow that up with a post expanding on the post-Soviet politics issue and also throwing allegations of UFO abductions into the mix. And now, in the midst of all this other drama, World Chess Federation President (and...
It's always dangerous to opine on a judgment you have only skimmed, so I'll phrase my thought as a question instead. Here is what the ATS Statute says: The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the...
[I posted this about the same time that Ken posted his discussion of the same case below, which is definitely worth reading. Please forgive any repetitions. But we are both on the same page.] In a blockbuster opinion that could spell the end of the vast bulk of Alien Tort Statute litigation, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit...
I have just now been forwarded a copy of the 2nd Circuit opinion released today in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum. I say "apparently" because I have hastily read it in the last couple of minutes; see also Julian's post above. But unless I am greatly mistaken, it is a blockbuster opinion on the basics of ATS litigation. However, the...
Just bumped into Independent Diplomat, "The Diplomatic Advisory Group," while casting around. Along with the Public International Law & Policy Group, this seems to part of what may be the growing phenomenon of private contractor diplomacy, of the non-profit kind. I first noticed the phenomenon in the context of small island states and their use of the Foundation for...
At risk of getting flooded with emails from various publicists in the case, disputing this or that, I point readers to a good summary article of the background dispute, the allegations and responses on the issue of plaintiff lawyer behavior, and a set of new materials that have come out since Roger posted on the July video outtakes a couple...
Chuck Lane makes this case for rejecting a "cry fire" analogy on Koran burning, as suggested by Justice Breyer in a book-flacking recent interview with George Stephanopoulos. The logic is pretty clear: that where an expressive act creates an immediate danger, it's not constitutionally protected. If the burning of a Koran in Florida was going to cost lives in Afghanistan,...
