For those of you who don't read Balkinization -- and you should! -- Brian Tamanaha has a wonderful post on the Wizard of Oz, which, it turns out, is actually a political allegory about the debate over gold and silver. Who knew? ...
The D.C. Circuit rendered an interesting decision in The Fund for Animals, Inc. v. Kempthorne on the interpretation of a federal statute regulating mute swans, a non-native species of migratory birds. At issue is whether the statute and relevant treaties prohibit the hunting and killing of mute swans. The State of Maryland wishes to reduce the population of...
Religion has always been at the cutting edge of transnational association, and that's proving as true today with this story: breakaway elements of the US episcopal church are putting themselves under the jurisdiction (if that's the appropriate vocabulary) of more conservative Anglican churches in Africa. Earlier this week it was several Northern Virginia parishes which aligned themselves with the...
David Kaye and K. Russell LaMotte (along with illustrator Peter Hoey) argue in a recent NY Times op-ed that one way the new Congress can attempt to gain back some of the international good-will that the U.S. has lost is to approve some of the many treaties that have been submitted by a President but are currently languishing. They explain:The...
Gary Lawson and Guy Seidman have just published an interesting article, The Jeffersonian Treaty Clause, in the University of Illinois Law Review. In a direct, originalist challenge to Missouri v. Holland, the article argues that the treaty power is limited by inherent structural limitations on executive power. Here is the abstract: The Treaty Clause of the federal Constitution declares that...
Does the fate of the Doha Round negotiations keep you up at night? Are you worried about the future of global free trade? Well, this online chat with WTO Director General Pascal Lamy is going is for you. Lamy will be chatting with.. pretty much anyone in the world who signs up (that is to say, the first 500 folks...
Speaking of revised government tests, the foreign service exam and the general criteria for selection are getting an overhaul as a result of a look from McKinsey. The new process will allow for consideration of factors beyond test scores (to take references and international experience into consideration, for instance). The exam itself doesn't sound like it'll get changed...
Last week, Julian criticized Hamdan for its failure "to defer to the executive's reasonable interpretations of the relevant statutes, treaties, and customary international law of war." Julian's use of the term "reasonable" implies that, at least in principle, the executive could offer an unreasonable interpretation of a statute, treaty, or customary rule — one that, accordingly, would not require...
Ordinary citizens greet the Prime Minister, Helen Clark, as "Helen." ...
Although evidence that Bush and Blair lied about Saddam's WMD capabilities has been accumulating for the past couple of years, this latest revelation is still shocking:In the testimony revealed today Mr Ross, 40, who helped negotiate several UN security resolutions on Iraq, makes it clear that Mr Blair must have known Saddam Hussein possessed no weapons of mass destruction. He...
The Iraqi government's assault on the independence and objectivity of the IHT continues. The trial court was its first target: not only did Iraqi President Jalal Talabani tell reporters on the eve of the Dujail trial that Saddam had signed a written confession and "deserve[d] to be executed 20 times a day for his crimes against humanity," high-ranking officials...
Here is the text of the speech by new UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. There are a few good lines from the speech, such as the following: Member States need a dynamic and courageous Secretariat, not one that is passive and risk-averse. The time has come for a new day in relations between the Secretariat and Member States. The...
