Here is the letter of the EU Ambassador to the US to Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell protesting the (then) imminent execution of Teresa Lewis, among other international voices attempting to win commutation for the convicted killer. Obviously the effort failed. I'm not sure that there has been any episode in which one can establish a causal link between such international...
Chiara Giorgetti devotes a good part of her book to the reactions of the international community, and the tools available to it, with regard to the lack of a functioning government in Somalia since 1991 and the consequent ripple effects that the failure of functioning governance there has produced on other countries. The example she gives of the management of Somali...
President Obama's UN General Assembly speech this morning highlighted the place of civil society as an agent of progress: Civil society is the conscience of our communities, and America will always extend our engagement abroad with citizens beyond the halls of government. We will call out those who suppress ideas, and serve as a voice for the voiceless....
The U.S. Congress is just about to have their much-dreaded midterm elections, and they will probably not do much before November 2 except to spend millions of dollars on annoying campaign ads. But it looks like before they break for the election, Congress may vote on two bills that may violate U.S. obligations under the WTO and NAFTA. First, Congress is...
Chiara's book is quite timely and topical and fills a puzzling gap in international legal studies. The concept of failed state, mostly epitomized by Somalia after 1991, became fashionable in the United Nations in the 1990s as the Security Council discovered its muscles under Chapter VII of the Charter and broadened the notion of threat to the peace to encompass humanitarian...
The following is a guest post from Chimene Keitner, Associate Professor of Law at Hastings. My thanks to her for contributing it! The Second Circuit’s recent panel opinion in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum has justifiably spurred much talk in the blogosphere, including posts by Trey Childress, Ken Anderson, Julian Ku, and Kevin Jon Heller. Here are my preliminary thoughts. First, it...
The AsianSIL has a call for papers for its Third Biennial Conference which will be held August 27-28, 2011 in Beijing. The conference theme is Asia and International Law: A New Era. (Note: no "?" at the end of the theme like a conference organized by hedging U.S. academics. I can say this because I have stuck my share of question...
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...
