The Yale Pocket Part has republished a great student note from 1988 by Jill Pryor (now a partner at a law firm in Atlanta) defining the phrase "natural-born citizen." It only took twenty years, but given the uncertainty about John McCain's constitutional eligibility, the topic is now timely. Here is the conclusion: If the eligibility of a presidential candidate...
This conference at UCLA on March 11 addressing the topic of U.S. foreign policy toward rogue states looks really interesting. On March 11, 2008, the Burkle Center for International Relations at UCLA will convene a conference featuring Governor Bill Richardson, Burkle Center Senior Fellows General Wesley Clark (ret.) and Former Foreign Minister to Thailand Kantathi Suphamongkhon and leading scholars,...
How strange it is that the U.S. presidential elections have flipped the usual internationalist/anti-internationalist rhetoric. In his latest speech, Republican candidate Sen. John McCain knocked both of his potential Democratic opponents for their pledge to threaten U.S. withdrawal from the international trade treaty. I will leave it to my opponent to argue that we should abrogate trade treaties, and...
Readers who enjoyed our recent symposium on Eric Posner and Adrian Vermeule's book Terror in the Balance will definitely want to check out Alice Ristroph's review of the book in the new issue of the Green Bag. This is no ordinary review — serious, respectful, dispassionate. Indeed, Alice's bete noire is precisely the tendency, so prevalent in the...
At Prawfsblawg today, my friend — and national-security law expert — Steve Vladeck discusses what the reversal of Mohammed Munaf's conviction means for his Supreme Court case. Here is a snippet:Munaf's habeas petition is one of two brought by U.S. citizens detained in Iraq set to be argued before the Supreme Court later this month (and in which I...
At the heart of the Ecuadoran/ Colombian/ Venezuelan tensions, there is a dispute over the facts that has legal implications as to whether Colombia’s military action was self-defense or anticipatory self-defense (which, as many would see it, would make it aggression). As CNN explains:[Ecuadoran President Rafael] Correa told reporters in Quito that [Colombia’s Presdient Alvaro] Uribe told him the...
As the Ugandan government and its rebel foes the Lords' Resistance Army have inched toward a negotiated end to their 20 year civil war, I've been blogging rather obsessively over the possibility that the ICC arrest warrants would prove decisive in preventing an end to the conflict. But there were always other reasons why a peace deal in Uganda was...
This has the look of a very ugly situation developing down south. President Hugo Chávez yesterday placed Venezuela on a war footing, sending thousands of troops and tanks to the border with Colombia after its neighbour killed a top rebel leader inside Ecuadorean territory. “Mr. Defense Minister, move me 10 battalions to the border with Colombia immediately - tank battalions,”...
At IntLawGrrls, our colleague Naomi Norberg notes that Cuba has signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. Like Naomi, I believe that the decision is a step in the right direction. Nevertheless, I think that the International Herald Tribune article to which Naomi links is somewhat...
Last year the British media entered into a voluntary agreement with the British Ministry of Defence to have a news blackout of Prince Harry's deployment in Afghanistan. Harry had been serving there about ten weeks when the news broke on the Drudge Report of his whereabouts. The BBC is now defending the news blackout. From the sounds...
Shocking legal news out of Iraq — the Court of Cassation has reversed the conviction of Mohammed Munaf, the US citizen sentenced to death for helping kidnap three Romanian journalists in Iraq in 2005:Munaf's lawyer, Joseph Margulies, said the Iraqi Court of Cassation reversed the conviction and sentence because it could not determine the role Munaf and other defendants played...
Joshua Keating of Foreign Policy has a new essay, How to Start Your Own Country in Four Easy Steps. He begins:With Kosovo unilaterally declaring independence and a host of wannabe states looking to follow its lead, you might be thinking it’s about time to set up your own country. You’ve picked out a flag, written a national anthem, even...
