John McGinnis and Nicholas Rosenkranz testified last week on the role of foreign and international law to interpret the Constitution. The full transcript of their testimony is here. At the end of his testimony, Rosenkranz raises a point that I think is often neglected in the discussion of constitutional comparativism: the deliberate attempt by other countries to impact our...
Nothing in the Geneva Conventions suggests the remedy for Art. 49(6) transfers is the deportation of the transferred population. In response to my earlier posts, Kevin, Marko and other commenters argued that since the creation of settlements was illegal, the remedy is their undoing, a return to status quo ante. In a discussion with Marko in my previous post,...
Over the last year, Julian and I both participated in a task force on treaties, jointly convened by the American Bar Association and the American Society of International Law. Along with the task force's other members including former guest bloggers like Ed Swaine and Curt Bradley (see the full list here), we've now produced a consensus report. Medellin served as the...
The international insistence on banning natural growth in Israeli settlements is ironic because it is this population that is most clearly legal under the Geneva Convention. After all, babies are born, not “transferred.” The discussion must begin with the text of the Fourth Geneva Convention. We will assume that the Convention applies to the West Bank (the Art. 2 issue), that...
I just finished chatting with Lou Dobbs on his CNN radio show about the latest among those who still deny Obama's eligibility to be president. A major in the reserves has balked at being shipped out to Iraq on the theory that Obama is not the commander-in-chief and the war is therefore illegal under international law. Deniers (aka "birthers") also...
My current take on Sotomayor testimony is that there is an odd discontinuity between her public speeches and articles on the one hand, and her testimony yesterday, and, to some greater degree, her record as a judge on the other. One interesting example is that old chestnut: Should a U.S. judge use international or foreign law to interpret the...
My colleague at Pepperdine Law School, Robert Anderson, has just posted on SSRN a draft article, Distinguishing Judges: An Empirical Ranking of Judicial Quality in the U.S. Court of Appeals. According to the abstract: This article presents an empirical quality ranking of 383 federal appellate judges who served on the United States Court of Appeals between 1960 and 2008....
With nothing much else to work with, Collin Levy presses the international law angle on Sotomayor with this op-ed piece in today's Wall Street Journal. In a speech to the American Civil Liberties Union of Puerto Rico in April, Judge Sotomayor explained that "ideas have no boundaries," and that "international law and foreign law will be very important in the discussion...
I see that I'm quoted by Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane in their New York Times article today, "CIA Had Plan to Assassinate Qaeda Leaders" (July 13, 2009). I'm trying hard to maintain radio silence and not blog, in order to let my shoulder heal up, but let me say something briefly about this. First, I'm delighted, of course, that...
So far in opening statements from Sotomayor confirmation hearings, we have John Cornyn and Tom Coburn condemning the use of foreign law in constitutional interpretation. You can be sure that they will follow up in colloquys -- in Cornyn's, possibly his first. (Michael Chertoff made it one of his suggested questions on the Times op-ed page this morning;...
Amos Guiora has a new essay at Jurist about judicial review and decision-making in the executive branch. It begins: Judicial review is judicial review. It is all or nothing. Sitting as the High Court of Justice, the Israeli Supreme Court proved that once again this week. The facts of Ashraf Abu Rahma vs. The Judge Advocate General (HCJ7195/08) are simple: the Israel...
Lest anyone think last week’s pair of hearings were Congress’ last word on the question of military commission trials, the House Armed Services Committee has already scheduled it own hearing on reforming the Military Commissions Act. The July 16 witness list features the head lawyer from each of the armed services (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines). Also, in keeping...
