I don't want to get into a pointless back and forth with Kevin on the significance of Bashir's visit to Kenya. I don't think the details of his visit change my views much. It still seems much more like a slap in the face than a sign of the ICC's power. But I think we can agree to disagree on...
Our friend and OJ guest contributor Professor Greg Gordon passes along the following call for papers -- for international law scholars and other subject areas -- for the Central Law Schools Association 2010 meeting. Full announcement after the jump: The Central States Law Schools Association 2010 conference will be held September 24 and 25, 2010, in Grand Forks, North Dakota,...
Lots of ironies in this story about Kenya hosting Sudan's President Bashir at a ceremony celebrating the establishment of its new "U.S.-style" Constitution. NAIROBI, Kenya - Kenya's president signed a new constitution into law Friday that institutes a U.S.-style system of checks and balances and has been hailed as the most significant political event since Kenya's independence nearly a half century...
OK, that's not exactly the title of this piece at Huffington Post, but the observations from Gary Arndt about Americans and the World sound true to me. Arndt has been traveling around the world since 2007, for no particular reason (see his travel blog here and yes, I'm very jealous of his life). Here are some my favorites from his...
[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...
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...
Further to a mysterious correspondent, who asks what would be a clear, simple, and brief - as in one to three sentences - definition of the field of national security law, of the kind you might include in a law school, grad school, or undergrad course catalog and course description. Suggestions welcomed....
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...
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...
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...
[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...
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...
