There was an interesting little sidebar comment from Justice Scalia in yesterday's death penalty decision in Kansas v. Marsh. Scalia said that: There exists in some parts of the world sanctimonious criticism of America's death penalty, as somehow unworthy of a civilized society. (I say sanctimonious, because most of the countries to which these finger-waggers belong had the death penalty...
I would not normally post about something as vapid as celebrity interviews on CNN, but I happened to watch the encore presentation of Anderson Cooper's interview with Angelina Jolie over the weekend. (Transcript available here). What was a pleasant surprise for me was that Jolie came across as believable and quite sincere about her work with the United Nations. You...
For those of you who missed it, U. Chicago law professor Eric Posner had a very sensible op-ed in the NYT yesterday defending the detention of suspected Al-Qaeda terrorists in Guantanamo Bay. Here's a brief excerpt, but the whole essay is worth reading: The detention of enemy aliens, especially enemy soldiers, during wartime is a long-established practice. Enemy aliens and soldiers...
The Spanish newswire service EFE is reporting that the Bush administration is reconsidering its policy of refusing to provide economic and military aid to countries that refuse to sign Bilateral Immunity Agreements with the U.S (BIA's). Such agreements — commonly known as "Article 98 agreements," in reference to the Rome Statute provision dealing with requests for surrender — prohibit...
On June 24, 2005, Yasser Salihee—a 30 year old Iraqi doctor who had who also worked as a translator and a journalist—was shot and killed at a U.S. checkpoint. He had been running an errand before going swimming with his wife and daughter. Salihee had been killed by Sgt. Joe Romero, a 33 year old ex-Army Ranger and sniper...
As reported in yesterday's post, a survey by Pew Research Center entitled "The Great Divide: How Westerners and Muslims View Each Other" reveals the startling news that Muslim majorities in numerous countries do not believe that Arabs carried out the September 11 terrorist attacks. But there is plenty of other other news from that poll that is worthy of...
The Security Council held an unusual meeting yesterday morning entitled "Strengthening international law: rule of law and maintenance of international peace and security". The reason it is unusual, at least to me, is that the discussion was not about any particular issue or problem, but rather a free-wheeling abstract discussion about the importance of international law generally. ...
The NYT and WSJ report that the Bush Administration, specifically the CIA and Treasury Department, have been secretly monitoring financial transactions conducted through SWIFT, a Belgian firm that conducts most of the world's financial traffic. This is a pretty obscure area of law, but it strikes me that the President is in better legal shape here than in the NSA wiretapping...
Ok this is really scary. According to a poll released today by the Pew Research Center "majorities in Indonesia, Turkey, Egypt, and Jordan say that they do not believe groups of Arabs carried out the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks." This is in addition to significant minorities of Muslims polled in France, Germany, Spain, Pakistan, and Nigeria who shared the...
Kim Sokchea of the International University of Japan has just posted on SSRN an interesting empirical study confirming what has long been expected: that bilateral investment treaties (BITs) "play a significant role in stimulating the inflows of foreign investment." You can download the article here. Here is the abstract: Bilateral investment treaties (BITs) are commonly regarded as one of the policy...
The Council on Foreign Relations has just released a report on Challenges for a Postelection Mexico. It takes a very cautious approach to any proposal for significant change on immigration and encourages a more aggressive approach to trade promotion for Mexican products. The focus of the report includes direct assistance to Mexico as a mechanism to stem the...
The chairman of an upcoming U.N. Conference on Small Arms Review tells Reuters he has received over 100,000 letters from U.S. gun-owners protesting the U.N.'s plot to ban all guns worldwide. According to the conference chairman, however, these letters are misguided. The small arms conference," he says, "will not negotiate any treaty to prohibit citizens of any country from...
