Ever since President Obama’s speech last week setting forth the general outlines by which he’ll resolve the mess at Guantanamo Bay, I’ve been trying to get my head around what the Administration will put into the legislation the President has suggested he’s going to work with Congress to get. Parts of that bill are maybe easier to see. For...
Professor Thomas M. Franck of NYU passed away on Wednesday afternoon. (NYU has a page in memoriam, here.) I assume his name is well-known to most, if not all, of the regular readers of Opinio Juris. Suffice it to say that his contributions to the field of international law are staggering, as can be glimpsed from his bio on his faculty page. But a faculty...
Second Prize for silliest right-wing comment concerning Sotomayor has to go to Mark Krikorian, who writes for National Review Online: Deferring to people's own pronunciation of their names should obviously be our first inclination, but there ought to be limits. Putting the emphasis on the final syllable of Sotomayor is unnatural in English...
Of all the silly right-wing attacks on Sonia Sotomayor, the reaction to her professed love of her native cuisine -- "My Latina identity also includes, because of my particularly adventurous taste buds, morcilla, pig intestines; patitas de cerdo con garbanzo, pigs' feet with beans; and la lengua y orejas de cuchifrito, pigs' tongue and ears" -- has to be the...
As a judge in the New York federal courts over the past 15 years, both at the district and appellate level, U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has had a fair number of cases involving the application of international law. She has never ruled on an Alien Tort Statute case, but my very quick scan suggests that, whatever else her...
That's today, in Australia. It's meant as a sort of continuing apology to Aboriginal peoples in Australia specifically for the practice, lasting up until about 1970, of taking Aboriginal children from their families (known as the "stolen Generations"), but also for the general mistreatment. It's not a holiday but appears to be an official commemoration. My question: could Americans...
Hat tip: The Faculty Lounge As if they ever go right? Anyway, this was a publicity stunt by conservative talk show host Mancow Muller, but it seems to have gone wrong in an unexpected way...
Could anything be more contradictory than the lives of our soldiers? They love America, so they spend long years in foreign lands far from her shores. They revere freedom, so they sacrifice their own that we may be free. They defend our right to live as individuals, yet yield their individuality in that cause. Perhaps most paradoxically of all, they...
Hard to know what to respond to first given all the news this past week on the Guantanamo/detention front. My own week began with participating in the fascinating and useful meeting President Obama held with some human rights advocates and academics. Since then, I have been tempted to explore the politics of a debate that now find Jack...
The Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation have put together a timely conference on Counterterrorism and the Obama Administration. It starts at 9:00 a.m. next Thursday, May 28 at the Capital Visitor Center in DC. I have a feeling it won't be entirely supportive of the Obama Administration policies, but at least it will benefit from the insights of Opinio Juris blogger...
Judge Thomas Buergenthal has recently published a memoir of his life as a child surviving Auschwitz. The book was originally published in German (where it was a bestseller) and is now out in English. The book, A Lucky Child, is absolutely wonderful and inspiring. He describes in wonderful detail his slow, painful descent into the hell of...
Eugene Kontorovich, well known to OJ readers for his work on piracy and universal jurisdiction (both separately and together), has a very interesting post partly responding to discussion here at OJ on universal jurisdiction and proposed legislation on Spain on universal jurisdiction. It is up over at Prawfsblawg and is a fun, quick read. Also, here is Eric Posner's comment,...
