In association with the International Commission of Jurists

General

17 Mar

Duke Law School's Program in Public Law recently started a new blog, Executive Watch.  According to the Duke Press release, it will feature "news stories and commentary about executive-branch actions, including executive orders, presidential memos, and signing statements."  The blog may be of interest to our readers as, in addition to issues of domestic authority, it will address perennial topics in U.S. foreign...

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17 Mar

A reader has left a comment to my previous post in which he alleges that Alex tipped off Bashir that the OPT was going to seek his arrest and speculates that Alex might have promised Bashir to oppose the genocide charges. I have reluctantly left the comment up, because I don't believe that it is my role as a blogger to...

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15 Mar

Paul Krugman's Friday column has to weigh heavily on anyone with a 7-year-old boy. The parallels are clear, at least on the back end. Krugman is hardly the first to play the Norman Angell card. Angell's ill-timed proclamation of the end of war in the run-up to the Guns of August figures prominently in the opening chapter...

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13 Mar

The Obama Administration selected Friday afternoon (go figure) to release its whammy of a brief on the standard it believes should govern the President’s authority to hold the current Guantanamo detainees. Here’s the key paragraph: The President has the authority to detain persons that the President determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, and...

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12 Mar

Last month, I wrote a post about the upcoming Eurovision song competition and European politics. I wanted to point out that the competition will be hosted by (and televised from) Moscow and that the Georgian entry was going to sing a disco song that teases Vladimir Putin called, ahem, "We Don't Wanna Put In." See it performed here.   Anyway, in the final paragraph I...

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12 Mar

I pass along the following call for panels from the co-chairs of American Branch of the International Law Association's International Law Weekend 2009. The theme, "Challenges to Transnational Governance," is quite timely.  I encourage OJ readers to submit proposals and to attend what promises to be a great event. On October 22-24, 2009, the American Branch of the International Law Association...

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11 Mar

I was amused to read about the kerfuffle in the UK over the supposedly rude treatment UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his wife received during his recent White House visit. London newspapers are howling over a string of alleged snubs by Obama to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown during his visit to Washington last week — including a squabble over presidential...

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11 Mar

Longtime readers know that I have been pretty skeptical of the usefulness of the ICC's actions against Sudan.  Indeed, Professor Jide Nzelibe and I have argued in prior work that international criminal tribunals can worsen humanitarian atrocities rather than deter or prevent them, especially when they are aimed at leaders who have the power to commit greater atrocities to stay...

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07 Mar

The NYT Room for Debate blog is kind enough occasionally to invite me to contribute on law topics. It recently held a mini-debate on the question of whether Congress should empanel some kind of “truth commission” to deal with issues of torture and other things from the Bush administration. I was the voice in opposition. Other contributors were David Cole, Michael Ratner,...

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06 Mar

Here.  And who knew that there was an Association of Public Diplomacy Scholars, and that one can get a master's degree in the field? Public diplomacy's rise among both policymakers and academics has been pretty dramatic.  In the government, what used to be a backwater, both in main State's public affairs bureau and in the now defunct US Information Agency, was...

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06 Mar

This is a non-substance post just to say thanks from all of us to Richard Gardiner and all the commenters for offering, and to Duncan for organizing, the treaty interpretation symposium this past week.  It was marvelously intellectual and subtle and, even having read the book, I am still reading the posts carefully.  I think they will be read and...

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