In association with the International Commission of Jurists

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12 Dec

Which of following South American countries is among the least corrupt countries in the world: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, or Peru? Which of the following Middle East/North African countries is among the most corrupt countries in the world: Algeria, Iran, Iraq, Libya, or Syria? (Continue Reading) According to Transparency International's recently published corruption index for 2006, the correct answer is Chile...

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12 Dec

One of the more interesting sidebar comments that occurred during the ASIL Interest Group meeting in San Diego yesterday came from Bill Dodge regarding the MCA. With his permission, I will post the gist of it. If I understood him correctly, he essentially suggested that the ex post facto provision of the MCA included an interesting reference that...

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11 Dec

As Roger mentioned, a number of us are hanging out today in San Diego. Professor Peter Krug of University of Oklahoma has presented an intriguing paper on domestic court treatment of international court decisions. The U.S. Supreme Court applied a "respectful consideration" standard to disregard the decision of the International Court of Justice in Sanchez-Llamas back in June....

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11 Dec

I'm sure Kevin will have more to say about this, but it is worth noting that Augusto Pinochet, former Chilean dictator and the target of many international prosecution efforts for his actions as Chilean dictator, passed away yesterday. Pinochet may indeed face punishment for his crimes, but it won't be at the hands of international or domestic courts. ...

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11 Dec

Kofi Annan gave his final public speech today as UN Secretary General. He chose to give it in a place full of historical resonances: Independence, Missouri, the birthplace of Harry Truman, the American President most associated with the UN. In part, this may be viewed as a rebuke to President George W. Bush, who has been the sharpest...

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11 Dec

Several OJ contributors (Peter, Duncan, Julian and Roger) are in San Diego today as part of an ASIL Interest Group meeting. Right now we are discussing with John McGinnis and a couple dozen other prominent internatioal law scholars this provocative article by John McGinnis and Ilya Somin, in which they argue that customary international law is fundamentally defective because...

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11 Dec

Bill Dodge has an interesting piece on customary international law and Sosa that was recently published on SSRN. It is worth a read, particularly in light of our online workshop on the piece by Jack Goldsmith, Curtis Bradley, and David Moore. Here is Dodge's abstract: This paper explores the role of customary international law in the U.S. legal system...

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09 Dec

Jeane Kirkpatrick died yesterday. Here is the New York Times obituary. And here is an excerpt from her 1979 article, Dictatorships and Double Standards, in Commentary that launched her political career: Fulfilling the duties and discharging the functions of representative government make heavy demands on leaders and citizens, demands for participation and restraint, for consensus and compromise. It is...

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08 Dec

Blood Diamond, which opens nationwide today, sounds like a dreadful movie, as movies whose central message is unsubtle social commentary so often are. But for obvious reasons it's provoking a lot of interest in the role that the diamond trade has played in African civil conflict. You can find a good update of the conflict diamonds situation here,...

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08 Dec

A very prominent scholar requesting anonymity emailed me to challenge my post yesterday regarding Second Life. He writes, I am surprised that you of all people, with your knowledge of arbitration, think that second world is lawless. For two reasons it is not remotely lawless. First, it has elaborate choice of law and choice of forum provisions. ...

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08 Dec

As readers of this blog may know, I was not a huge fan of the Supreme Court's 2006 decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and I more or less welcomed Congress' decision to reverse much of the result of that decision in the Military Commissions Act of 2006. But the Hamdan decision could still retain larger significance despite Congress' action....

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07 Dec

In the past week or so Julian and Duncan have had interesting posts about applying laws to terra nullius and moon stations. (See here and here). But there is yet another world in which we are in unchartered waters headed to virgin territory: the virtual world. By now we have long wrestled with electronic commerce and...

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