In association with the International Commission of Jurists

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10 Jan

Deborah has already mentioned the bill introduced this week by Rep. John Conyers for a National Commission on Presidential War Powers and Civil Liberties, which has been likened in the popular press to a truth and reconciliation commission. (A draft version of the bill is available here.)  I think this is a somewhat inaccurate description.  Truth commissions are often focused  on understanding...

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10 Jan

OJ fellow-traveller Marko Milanovic has a typically excellent discussion of the newly-released secret OLC memos -- discussed in toto by Deb here -- concerning the legality of the invasion of Iraq.  I'd tell you to go read it, but if you haven't already added EJIL:Talk! to your RSS reader by now, there's really no saving you....

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08 Jan

Philippe Sands gave an extensive interview on NPR's Fresh Air yesterday.  Sands is already on record with his view that torture has occurred as a part of U.S. detention policy at GTMO and that high level officials are responsible for these acts.  Although I'm not sure he had much new to say, his careful and eloquent arguments make for easy listening. ...

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08 Jan

A single, bad-weather week in January seems to bring more actual news than blog commentary about it. Among under-blogged tidbits this week: • A federal court in Washington heard the first post-Boumediene case about whether constitutional rights extend to U.S. military-held detainees in Afghanistan; • Senator Feinstein (no kidding) introduced a bill that would not only mandate the closure of Guantanamo, but...

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08 Jan

I met my client yesterday for the first time.  For obvious reasons, I cannot recount the substance of what he, I, and his legal associate, Peter Robinson, discussed.  But I thought readers might be interested in my impressions of the visit and my sense of Dr. Karadzic, which bears little resemblance to the image portrayed in the media. First,...

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07 Jan

Are we seeing a new media template?  There looks to be a trend of established, well-respected (but in some cases, relatively low circulation) print journals teaming up with bloggers to create online content that joins timely reportage and commentary with traditional longer essays and reported articles.  Even the New Yorker (the New Yorker!) has added blogs to its site.  (Steve...

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06 Jan

The New York Times has a thoughtful piece by Adam Liptak this weekend on the Obama Administration’s difficult choice in its forthcoming brief in the Supreme Court case of al-Marri v. Pucciarelli. Essentially, the Obama Administration will have to choose between continued detention, deportation to a third country, or prosecution. Each choice is perilous. If...

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05 Jan

John Bolton and John Yoo have this op-ed in today's NY Times vaunting Article II treaties over congressional-executive agreements. While conceding the fact of CEAs in the international economic context, the duo argues that going the CEA route for such agreements as the ICC and a successor to the Kyoto protocol "would pose a serious challenge to American principles...

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04 Jan

John Pike, of GlobalSecurity.org website, has a provocative op-ed in today's Washington Post (January 4, 2009, B3) arguing that the evolution of battlefield robots might mean robots as the soldiers that do the killing on future battlefields: Within a decade, the Army will field armed robots with intellects that possess, as H.G. Wells put it, "minds that are to our minds...

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04 Jan

According to the ever-reliable Sudan Vision Daily, the Pre-Trial Chamber has already decided to issue the arrest warrant for Bashir: The entire Sudanese people will not be surprised if the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against the Sudanese President Omer Al-Bashir because the decision of the ICC judges was circulated by the UN chief Ban KI-moon, the US State...

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