The success of a UN Secretary General is largely dependent on two things: (1) the charisma and personal drive of the office holder; and (2) his (to date, they have all been men) ability to lead and work well with the Secretariat. On both dimensions, recent evidence suggests Ban Ki-moon appears to be in real trouble. Unless...
So says the headline of a WSJ news article today (Monday, August 24, 2009, B1, by August Cole), noting that unmanned aircraft - drones such as the Predator to us civilians, although the Pentagon seems to prefer UMV - are transforming not just the military, strategic as well as tactical considerations, but defense contracting. (PopSci ran a story a little...
Cross-posted at Balkinization UPDATE: The long-awaited report by the CIA Inspector General completed in 2004 and kept secret since has now been released by the Administration. The memos former Vice President Cheney says demonstrate the efficacy of torture in eliciting information are also now available. Note the Cheney memos are heavily, heavily redacted and it is impossible to tell...
Kathleen Sullivan has filed a petition for certiorari (2009 WL 2173302) in Abdullahi v. Pfizer arguing that there is a circuit split on the question of corporate liability under international law: There is no general international common law of torts. Thus, to establish subject matter jurisdiction under the ATS for a violation of international law by a private corporation or individual,...
I received this notice that I thought our readers may find of interest: The National Law School of India Review (NLSIR) is the flagship journal of one of India's premier law institutions, the National Law School of India University, Bangalore. The NLSIR is a peer-reviewed journal, and is published twice a year. The latest issue - Volume 21(1) - included contributions...
Ruth Wedgwood comments at Forbes magazine website on the "compassionate" release of Al-Megrahi from prison in Scotland. I agree overall with Ruth: Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, is now a free man. He was convicted in the specially created Hague trial court by a panel of Scottish judges, and his appeal was rejected by the Scottish appellate chamber. He remained in prison...
[caption id="attachment_9512" align="alignright" width="137" caption=""][/caption] The battlefield robots we have mostly discussed here at Opinio Juris are those that are about remote control - realtime control by a human operator who is not actually in the cockpit of the Predator, for example. We've talked somewhat about autonomy issues and robots - battlefield robots with programming enabling them to be able to...
I want to offer a few thoughts on Dean Edley's email, which I appreciate Deb posting. I am much less impressed by his reasoning than Deb appears to be. (And please, Deb, correct me if I am wrong about that.) At the outset, it is important to note that I think Dean Edley's conclusion -- that Yoo cannot be fired, at...
Aaron Zelinsky, YLS '10, smart person and occasional correspondent with me, has an article up at HuffPo arguing for a certain parallel (a negative one) between the Lockerbie release this week and the Guantanamo detainees. Aaron argues that it was wrong for the Lockerbie bomber to have been released, and would not have been, had he been tried and convicted...
Controversy continues to surround John Yoo and the memos he wrote while a Justice Department lawyer that were used as the legal basis for torture in U.S. interrogation operations. Under the circumstances, I thought it appropriate to reprint here an email recently circulated to UC Berkeley faculty, administration and students by Dean Christopher Edley of Berkeley Law School. (Happy to...
Cross-Posted at Balkinization Following my testimony last month to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security on military commissions and the like, Senator Kyl (R-AZ) was kind enough to send along some follow-up questions to answer. His first follow-up question was one of the same as one he’d posed in the hearing itself: What if any empirical...
Yesterday, the Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission awarded final damage awards for the fifteen partial and final awards on liability it rendered between July 1, 2003 and December 19, 2005. You can access the damages decisions for Eritrea here, and those for Ethiopia here. According to the AP, both sides will accept the awards, but neither is apparently thrilled with...
