General

U.N. Special Rapporteur Offers Limited Pushback Against CIA Drone Strikes

From this NYT story, the upcoming report to the U.N. Human Rights Council on U.S. drone strikes seems fairly restrained.  The main pushback is to end CIA involvement in drone strikes, on the theory that CIA operatives are not privileged belligerents.  This is indeed, the strongest legal argument against drone strike, at least to me, but it seems also pretty...

Is the Land Mine Treaty Just “International Political Correctness”?

I have always thought the Ottawa Convention banning landmines was a nice idea, but somewhat unrealistic. Case in point: the U.S. and South Korea rely on landmines to prevent a North Korean attack on South Korea. It is hard to imagine a cheaper more effective deterrent than landmines, as David Rivkin and Lee Casey argue in today's WSJ.  As a...

R.I.P. Professor Gabriel Wilner

[caption id="attachment_12532" align="alignright" width="120" caption="Professor Gabriel Wilner"][/caption] Sad news from the University of Georgia: Gabriel Michael Wilner, a University law professor and executive director of International, Comparative and Graduate Legal Studies, died unexpectedly at his home Friday. A native of Beirut, Lebanon, Wilner has been with UGA since 1973 and has served in several capacities since coming to the University. He has taught...

Spanish Domestic Law of Universal Jurisdiction

In the extensive and sometimes heated arguments over universal jurisdiction, Judge Baltasar Garzon, and national courts such as those of Spain, often missing is much scholarly information on the actual evolution and state of Spanish domestic law on universal jurisdiction, certainly in English and accessible to English language scholars.  Ignacio de la Rasilla del Moral, a Spanish academic (apparently currently in the US), has put up on SSRN a discussion of the evolution - rise and fall - of universal jurisdiction law in Spain, up to mid-2009 and proposed revisions to the Spanish law.  The Swan Song of Universal Jurisdiction in Spain, 9 International Criminal Law Review (2009) 777-808.  I have various disagreements with the way that the article treats international law aspects of crimes subject to universal jurisdiction, but overall it is a very helpful addition to the scholarship for English language scholars seeking to understand what it means inside domestic Spanish law.  The abstract is below the fold.

A Deeply Unpersuasive Argument Against Elena Kagan

The Washington Times has an editorial that seems to argue that because Elena Kagan supports the teaching of international and comparative law, she actually believes that "foreign law trumps the Constitution." It was under Ms. Kagan's leadership while dean of Harvard Law School, for instance, that Harvard dropped constitutional law as a required course for graduation, while adding a requirement for...

I Bravely Defend Obama’s Sudan Policy Against Mia Farrow

Actress Mia Farrow has a scathing op-ed in the WSJ today denouncing Obama's Sudan policy. The crus of her critique is that Obama is not pushing hard to send Bashir to the ICC. Last week U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan Scott Gration told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that although he remains supportive of "international efforts" to bring Sudanese President Omar...

Dershowitz: “My job today is to delegitimize international law.”

The Jerusalem Post reports on a recent discussion between Alan Dershowitz, Aharon Barak, and Amnon Rubinstein on Israel's proper attitude toward international law.  Each represented a different perspective. Barak (former Israeli Supreme Court chief) suggests that Israel must follow international law as it is, while Rubinstein argued that Israel should engage to make sure international law is interpreted fairly and...

Is the OAS Firearms Convention Unconstitutional?

David Kopel, Theodore Bromund, and Ray Walser offer this Heritage Foundation essay analyzing (and attacking) the Inter-American Convention on the Illicit Sale of Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives and Other Related Materials (CIFTA).   Although critical, the essay doesn't actually focus on the constitutional problems, since those are fairly unclear. In fact, the First Amendment problems seem larger than the Second Amendment...

A Word on Maqaleh

Cross-posted at Balkinization Following my co-blogger Ken Anderson’s lead, I wanted to add a few additional notes on the D.C. Circuit’s holding today that a group of detainees held at the U.S. military base at Bagram, Afghanistan, do not have a constitutional right to seek a writ of habeas corpus in U.S. federal court. While acknowledging that at least two...

Should We Expand the Duties of Defenders in the Law of Armed Conflict?

During a conference earlier this week at Northwestern on Israel and International law, NYU law professor Samuel Estreicher presented an interesting proposal to shift the focus of the law of armed conflict toward the duties of defenders.  Arguing that most of the law (or at least law interpretation) seems focused on attackers, the duties of defenders are largely free of...

No Habeas Jurisdiction at Bagram

I'm sure others here at OJ will have more detailed views, but ...

EJILTalk Discussion of ‘The Rise of International Criminal Law’

In the category of advertisements for myself ... Julian was kind enough to mention that EJILTalk is hosting a discussion of an article of mine called The Rise of International Criminal Law, which appeared in EJIL last year as part of its 20th anniversary issues.  It was a relatively short, but wide-ranging essay trying to assess, twenty years on, where ICL has gone and is likely to go, on a whole series of otherwise unrelated issues.  EJIL ran a response in the print edition by Amrita Kapur, and in addition responses at the online blog by her and by Brad Roth.  I have finally managed to get a response together, which is quite long and will run in three posts.  The other responses are linked at the beginning of that post, as well.  I have to thank publicly EJILTalk for running such a long response, which in many ways is practically a new essay - but especially Amrita Kapur and Brad Roth for reading so closely and with such nuance my original article.  I'm very grateful to them for so much close reading and thought.  Below the fold is a bit from my response.