Okay maybe not war exactly. But last month the Supreme Court rendered an interesting opinion resolving a bitter border dispute between Delaware and New Jersey. Just how bitter? Well, according to the Court, the dispute became so heated that “Delaware considered authorizing the National Guard to protect its border from encroachment [and] one New Jersey legislator looked...
The long-awaited peace deal in Uganda may finally get done, according to this NYT report. But the ICC problem is not going away, since Kony is saying he will sign, but not implement the deal unless his arrest warrant is lifted. And although the ICC is talking tough, it is also showing signs they are preparing for a...
I got a chance last night (in my ASIL Conference hotel room) to catch an episode of HBO's Miniseries "John Adams" (Episode 5, "Unite or Die") and it is as good as advertised. Sure, the characters look a bit silly in their costumes, but the acting is good enough to make these historical figure seem real. And there...
A couple of weeks ago, Roger suggested that "that W&L's new 3L experiential learning program will result in the general neglect of elective subjects such as international law." Mark Drumbl disagrees; here is his response:Washington & Lee Law School (where I teach) recently has elected to make the third-year of its JD entirely experiential. This means a balance of...
Finally, some good news out of Iraq:An Iraqi judicial committee has dismissed terrorism-related allegations against Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein and ordered him released nearly two years after he was detained by the U.S. military. Hussein, 36, remained in custody Wednesday at Camp Cropper, a U.S. detention facility near Baghdad's airport. A decision by a four-judge panel said Hussein's case falls under...
It's not often that an NPR show features treaties, but last week, Ira Glass of This American Life, had a fascinating story about the US-Canada International Boundary Commission (listen to Act 1). In short, he recounts a fight between a Bush-appointed commissioner Dennis Schornack and the Justice Department over the application of a series of treaties between the United...
NY Times reporter Eric Lichtblau has published an account of DOJ during the Bush years, Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice, which we can add to the growing shelf of books looking at the legal aspects of Bush Administration national security policy. It mostly hews to the formula: bad things done, people hurt, the Constitution trashed. The book...
If you will indulge a serious post about human suffering, I wanted to pass on Harvard Law Professor Bill Stuntz’s wonderful reflections on his struggle with cancer. I think it is appropriate for this blog because he reflects upon human suffering throughout the world, and emphasizes the irony that only those living in privileged, rich countries think they should...
As this essay in the invaluable Institute for War and Peace Studies argues, a debate over the final location of the ICTY's documentary archives is missing the point. The archive of the ICTY is a vast and invaluable collection, and its holdings will be indispensible for anyone researching or investigating events of the 1990s, in any former Yugoslav republic. But most...
They're both participants in the reconquista, illegal immigrants as the foot soldiers and now a vodka purveyor as its cartographer. Entertaining little dust-up over this ad from Absolut, depicting (very roughly) Mexico along the lines of its early 19th century boundaries. The ad was targeted at Mexican consumers, "based upon historical perspectives and ...
Steve Ratner has a nice turn at the "Think Again" column in the latest Foreign Policy (teaser here - let this be a good reason to subscribe). Steve takes on various elements of the popular conventional wisdom on the Geneva Conventions, including the line that they are obsolete:The conventions won’t prevent wars—they were never intended to—but they can and...
This among his useful suggestions as to how to fix the errors of Bush in anti-terror policy in a Slate column last week:• Work with allies to establish an international legal framework for terrorists. Last week, John McCain called for a "new international understanding on the disposition of dangerous detainees under our control." This is a good idea, not because...
