I am not actually going to try and answer that question, but leave it to you. However, I did not want to let the occasion go by without marking it. The day it happened in 1989, I was actually at a human rights retreat organized by Henry Steiner and Philip Alston, a remarkable private meeting of human rights organizations, from...
Former guest blogger, Elizabeth Cassidy, passes along the following fellowship announcement from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). This is a one-year funded fellowship, perfect for those who research religious freedom under international law and who might, in the future, be looking to join the academy: USCIRF Announces 2009 Crapa Fellowship Program WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Commission on...
Via Larry Solum and the indispensable Legal Theory Blog, I draw your attention to this sure-to-be controversial and provocative new article by Michael Stokes Paulsen, The Constitutional Power to Interpret International Law (Yale Law Journal 2009). Here is the SSRN abstract: What is the force of international law as a matter of U.S. law: 'Who determines that force' This Essay maintains...
Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s student note in the 1979 Yale Law Journal is a piece of work. It makes an extravagant case for Puerto Rican statehood based on terms of accession that are more favorable to Puerto Rico than any other state in the Union. Her proposal is a sort of affirmative action plan for what she describes as...
Readers will note that today Opinio Juris has incorporated a new comment feature that allows our readers to help regulate the quality of comments. The comment rating feature allows readers to vote “Yea” or “Nay” to any comment that is posted. After a certain number of negative votes are cast to a comment (we are still testing the...
I wanted to let OJ readers know that I will also be blogging over at Volokh Conspiracy, where Senior Conspirator Eugene Volokh has been kind enough to extend me an invitation. My reason for putting this up here is not so much to announce that, but instead to say that I am not going anywhere from OJ. I...
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...
