In association with the International Commission of Jurists

General

03 May

Australia's government has announced that Australia will accede to the COE Cybercrime Convention (and not, as many are reporting that it will merely "sign" the Convention, which, I suppose, reflects the media's continued inability or unwillingness to sort out the basic issues of treaty formation).   With Australian accession, the COE Cybercrime Convention will have 27 states parties.  It remains the only cyber-specific multilateral treaty out there.  And...

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30 Apr

I've been lite blogging and will be for a bit longer, due to travel and some deadline pressures.  I will try to get something up about the latest drone hearing in Congress, the ACLU's letter, and that stuff.  Let us not neglect the EU debt crisis, either.  Kudos to Northwestern University law school's Searle Center, for the conference I am...

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29 Apr

Still catching up on yesterday’s news that DOD released the much-anticipated 2010 edition of the Manual for Military Commissions (MMC). The Manual is here. Among its many provisions of interest (I’m still skimming) are the rules set forth for prosecutions for the commission crime of material support for terrorism – a crime I and others have argued does not...

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29 Apr

Arizona's already notorious anti-immigrant measure, enacted last week and making unauthorized presence in the U.S. a crime under state law, isn't likely to last long.  But the courts may have nothing to do with its demise.  It's the economic hit that Arizona is clearly going to take that will bring the state around, I suspect sooner rather than later.  Lost...

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27 Apr

On a non-aggression note, Jennifer Howard has an article in yesterday's Chronicle of Higher Education about Karin Calvo-Goller's baseless criminal-libel suit in France against NYU's Joseph Weiler.  It's an excellent piece -- and not just because she is kind enough to quote me.  Here's a snippet: If you're an author confronted with a negative book review, you have several options. You...

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27 Apr

What should South Korea do if it confirms the responsibility of North Korea for the sinking of a South Korean naval vessel?  This article quotes a Korean law professor offering three options: Writing in JoongAng Daily, Kim Hyun-soo, professor of international law at Inha University, said Lee has three options if he wishes to avoid risking all-out war on the peninsula. He...

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26 Apr

My colleague David Post and I have an op-ed in today's National Law Journal.  In it, we challenge the sufficiency of existing responses to cyberattacks, whether in terms of pushing for heightened security, more criminal law enforcement or applying the laws of war (if applicable).  Criminal law (and the laws of war for that matter) depends on identifying and holding...

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25 Apr

I still think there is no chance of this happening, but Christopher Hitchens offers this narrative of how and why he is pushing for legal action against the Vatican, or maybe at least a deposition of the Pope himself. I telephoned a distinguished human-rights counsel in London, Geoffrey Robertson, and asked him if the law was powerless to intervene. Not at...

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25 Apr

The International Whaling Commission's proposed compromise on the whaling dispute has been released (h/t Jurist). As I noted before, the proposed deal would bring all nations within the IWC framework, but explicitly permit commercial whaling for certain nations for at least the next 10 years. The numbers permitted under the proposal is a little murky, but it may include thousands...

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