My sympathies are with those who have to drive anywhere in Manhattan this week as the General Assembly gets underway. In past years I have experienced the privilege of being inside the security cordon and also the inconvenience of being outside it. But now we can all experience being inside the main public events through the UN Webcast! The...
According to Newsweek, the answer may well be yes: As chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo has so far steered clear of controversial cases. In doing so, he hoped to allay U.S. fears that the ICC would become a politicized tool for settling scores. Which is why it's so surprising that Moreno-Ocampo is now considering an investigation into...
In case you were curious about the text of the letter sent by former directors of the CIA to President Obama urging him to reverse the AG's decision to appoint a prosecutor to investigate various CIA activities under the Bush administration, RCP has posted a pdf of the text. It is short and, unsurprisingly, rests on the names of the...
IntLawGrrls has a new project going titled, Experts at Law. Here's how they describe it: Organized by field of expertise, this series of posts aims to provide easily accessible information to conference organizers, media, and others who seek expert opinions on a variety of subjects while ensuring gender balance. The list below provides institutional affiliations for, as well as links to,...
Paula Schriefer of Freedom House makes a compelling argument about the central failings of the UN Human Rights Council and how they can be overcome in this piece over at Foreign Policy. It is not, as many argue, the mere presence of bad actors on the Council or the ability of those states and their friends to run the place...
Two former U.S. military commanders took on the former VP for his ongoing support of torture in this scathing op-ed in last week's Miami Herald. Generals Krulak and Hoar took this unusual step because they felt "duty-bound" to "repudiate his [Cheney's] dangerous ideas." Hat tip to Tom Ricks, who calls it "the best article I read on the 8th...
Charlie Savage has a piece in today's NY Times on the OLC's recent memo advising the State Department that it may ignore congressional constraints attached to the 2009 foreign appropriations bill that purport to prohibit U.S. diplomats from attending meetings led by officials from states designated as state sponsors of terrorism on the ground that such constraints unconstitutionally limit...
The U.S. officially took its seat at the UN Human Rights Council on Monday. Yes, it will be joining a deeply flawed institution that, under its prior form as the HR Commission included in its membership Zimbabwe and Sudan* --hardly paragons of human rights compliance. But it is better for the U.S. to be inside the institution, working to bring...
Adjudicating Europe, a new blog dedicated to EU law, has just launched. Here's how the editors describe it: EU Law, despite its expansion and maturity, has not yet developed a comparable blogsphere of its own. Languages, the vastness of its scope, or a tendency to work and discuss inside national communities, have probably influenced this lack of blogging culture among EU...
Joel Trachtman, whose book with my colleague Jeff Dunoff on Ruling the World is just out, also has a new paper on the relationship of domestic political coalitions and compliance with international law. Of course, compliance theory has taken a strong hold in international law (and international relations) scholarship of late. For the most part, however, that work has had...
Priceless. * Ed Swaine pointed out to me that the photo I posted earlier might be a fake. Thanks, Ed!...
My former colleague and current friend, John Ip, has an interesting post at Concurring Opinions discussing his reaction to the Australian Research Council's ranking of law reviews. As he notes, the original version of the list was both absurd and US-centric, awarding the Modern Law Review a B and the Cambridge Law Review a C, while giving the Connecticut Law...
