Well, that was quick. One day after the media reported that a training manual prepared by the Canadian government for its diplomats listed the U.S. as a country where foreigners risk being tortured or abused, Canada quickly backtracked, promising to remove the U.S. — along with Israel — from the list:Canada's foreign ministry, responding to pressure from close allies,...
‘Torture is an unqualified evil.’ So it is. Statements obtained by the use of torture are inadmissible in evidence. Again, that’s very true. Article 15 of the UN Convention against Torture says as much. So does § 948r (b) of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, in words taken almost verbatim from the Torture Convention. But what of cruel, inhuman...
I received an email today from the Berkeley Journal of International Law requesting that I post this announcement: The Berkeley Journal of International Law (BJIL) is accepting submissions for it's annual symposium issue. The symposium issue shares its theme with the eighth annual Stefan A. Riesenfeld Symposium -- to be held in Berkeley on March 14 -- "Realizing The Potential...
Bobby Fischer has died (NYT obit here). I'm old enough to remember how he made chess a cool sport (albeit temporarily) with his 1972 match-up with Boris Spassky in Iceland. More recently he was in the news on the lam from US authorities, after having been indicted for violating the US sanctions regime against Yugoslavia with a Spassky...
In case you missed it, Yoo had this op-ed in yesterday's Philadelphia Inquirer. The Padilla claim seems no more than a piece of lint on his suit, from the tone of the piece, which would seem to defeat up front the largely symbolic (declaratory) objective of the action. Yoo appears never to have let his guard down on...
As our readers have probably noticed, I have been posting fairly regularly about World War II over the past few months. I'm delighted to finally be in a position to explain why: I am beginning to write to write a book on the jurisprudence of the Nuremberg Military Tribunals for Oxford University Press. Here is a snippet of...
I've posted on SSRN my recent book review for the American Journal of International Law of Malgosia Fitzmaurice and Olufemi Elias' Contemporary Issues in the Law of Treaties (Eleven International Publishing, 2005). Here's the abstract: On the surface, CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN THE LAW OF TREATIES, by Malgosia Fitzmaurice and Olufemi Elias, makes no overt claims regarding the debate over the...
I explained on Monday how the House of Lords in R (Al-Jedda) v. Secretary of State for Defence [2007] UKHL 58, [2008] 2 WLR 31, came to decide that the Multinational Force in Iraq was not acting for the UN. But that holding alone did not put paid to the respondent’s arguments drawn from SC Res. 1546. The Secretary of...
Opinio Juris is pleased to announced that in cooperation with the Council on Foreign Relations we will be sponsoring a book discussion with Walter Russell Mead about his new book, God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World. The book discussion will be held the week of February 4, and we wanted to announce...
David Luban has an extensive post over at Balkinization that makes it sound like Padilla's case against John Yoo is much easier than it is. It's not an easy case. I was especially surprised by Luban's discussion of immunities. Here's what he writes: 3. What about immunities? The short answer: only a few government officers get absolute immunity...
Notwithstanding its recent efforts to avoid recess appointments with 12 second sessions, the Senate will return in full next Monday. For international lawyers, the big question is whether UNCLOS finally gets a vote for the Senate's advice and consent. As I noted here and here, the SFRC voted UNCLOS out of Committee last fall largely along party lines....
I am very grateful to all the regular contributors here at Opinio Juris for having me, and to Kevin for his kind introduction. To begin with, I would like to offer some thoughts on the question set out above. At first glance, it seems utterly absurd. But exactly that question was recently considered by the House of Lords (if, obviously, by...
