In association with the International Commission of Jurists

General

21 Aug

[caption id="attachment_13148" align="alignright" width="150" caption=" "][/caption] The WSJ has an article on the U.S. Defense Department's push for a criminal prosecution of Wikileaks for releasing U.S. government documents on the Afghanistan war. Several officials said the Defense and Justice departments were now exploring legal options for prosecuting Mr. Assange and others involved on grounds they encouraged the theft of government property. Bringing a case...

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17 Aug

Foreign Policy has added a new blog to its roster that should be of interest to readers.  Here is the description of the blog, named The Multilateralist and run by David Bosco, an assistant professor at American University's School of International Service and the author of the excellent Five to Rule Them All: The UN Security Council and the Making...

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14 Aug

The WSJ has a nice discussion of the tricky legal arguments in the upcoming trial of alleged pirates in U.S. federal court.  Apparently, the prosecutors and defense attorneys are battling over the fact that U.S. statutes criminalizing piracy leave the definition to "the law of nations". Now the court in Norfolk must contend with the defense motion to dismiss the piracy...

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12 Aug

John Bellinger reflects on the meaning of the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 in today's world, in a post at Foreign Policy: Today, 12 August, is the 61st anniversary of the signing of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, the international treaties designed to protect soldiers and civilians during armed conflicts.  The treaties became the focus of international attention in 2002 when the...

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12 Aug

Via FuturePundit, who observes that this is really much more broadly about lie detection, note this press release from Northwestern University: For the first time, the Northwestern researchers used the P300 testing in a mock terrorism scenario in which the subjects are planning, rather than perpetrating, a crime. The P300 brain waves were measured by electrodes attached to the scalp of...

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11 Aug

[caption id="attachment_13091" align="alignright" width="144" caption="State Seal of South Korea"][/caption] Just in time for the 100th anniversary of the Korea-Japan Annexation treaty, a Korean scholar has new evidence that the treaty was never properly ratified by the Korean king. Hence, according to the scholar, the 1910 annexation treaty was never legal and Japan's annexation of Korea was illegal (or at least not authorized...

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03 Aug

Adam Serwer has a post up flagging a new suit by the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) against the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) over funds expended over the question of whether the Obama administration can designate and then target Al-Awlaki as a terrorist hiding out presumably in Yemen.  (Adam tried to contact me to...

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02 Aug

Sorry for the light posting of late - the Anderson family is currently in the Sierra Nevada, the eastern side out of Bishop, California, on God's own highway, the Empty Quarter of Highway 395, which runs north-south from southern California all the way up the eastern Sierra and beyond.  It is both the most beautiful and most varied countryside you...

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29 Jul

I've got some bigger picture thoughts (cautionary, from an alien rights perspective) over at the NY Times Room for Debate.  As for Judge Bolton's reasoning in her order invalidating key provisions of the law, it is striking how much work Hines v. Davidowitz (1941) does as the centerpiece precedent. In some ways it's a good fit.  Hines also involved a...

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24 Jul

The US Naval War College international law conference, held in June in Newport, Rhode Island, is now online in video format.  It was a terrific discussion, with great panels and discussants, and I counted it as a privilege to be there.  One reason the video for this conference is so interesting, however, is that the audience - and this year...

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