Julien fell asleep, dreaming of honors for himself and human rights for everyone else. (The Red and the Black, vol 2, chapter 39, 'The Ball'. The translation is a little loose, but captures the contemporary sense pretty well, wouldn't you say? More traditionally: "Julien fell asleep, dreaming of honors for himself and liberty for everyone else." The original ...
The State Department has posted John Bellinger's recent speech at the Fletcher School on international criminal justice. It is well worth a read, because it quite rightly highlights the US's many important contributions -- past and present -- to international criminal justice. That said, the speech regrettably dusts off all of the US's tired objections to the ICC: not giving...
In case you're tired of stodgy old international law, you might want to check out a new blog written by Jay Wexler, a professor at B.U., a leading law and religion scholar, and -- far more importantly -- a friend of mine from law school. I've tried to think of how to capture the cleverness of Jay's writing, but for...
Many of us who are law professors know Matthew Evangelista, who teaches in the government department at Cornell. I have just finished reading his Law, Ethics, and the War on Terror (Polity 2008). I teach a seminar on Just War Theory and ethics of war, so this is both professionally and pedagogically important for me. Evangelista is a graceful writer,...
Adding to the fortune-telling articles concerning the policies of the incoming Obama Administration, the Wall Street Journal states that the current administration's policies will go through the transition "largely intact." However, I think it is just too early to tell. The WSJ article begins: President-elect Barack Obama is unlikely to radically overhaul controversial Bush administration intelligence policies, advisers say, an approach that...
Turns out rumors of a new Obama Administration-developed security court may have been greatly exaggerated – or at least premature. The blogosphere was briefly abuzz yesterday after an AP wire story in the morning reported that some of the Guantanamo detainees “might have to go before a new court designed especially to handle sensitive national security cases, according to [unnamed]...
According to news reports, President-elect Obama is going to take major steps to end President Bush's system of trial via military commissions. It sounds...
Critics of the U.S. war on terrorism often deride it as a bad metaphor or an excuse to conduct controversial detentions, interrogations and military trials. But what the Pentagon refers to as the "Global War on Terrorism" (GWOT) has many of the characteristics of a typical armed conflict, even outside of the main battlefield in Afghanistan. As the NYT reports: The...
'Beware of that young man, who has so much energy,' her brother cried; 'if the Revolution begins again, he will have us all guillotined.' ...
UGA Law School will be a hosting a conference on international commercial arbitration fifty years after the New York Convention on January 29. Announcement here. Featured will be Gary Born, who has a major new treatise on the subject; other participants will include George Bermann and Andreas Lowenfeld. Looks like good stuff....
All the really cool people in the world are at SMU in Dallas today, at a conference called The Rise of Transnational Networks. Professor Jenia Turner is the organizer, and she and her colleagues and the SMU students have done a fantastic job of getting great speakers and panelists. This is a very smart meeting. The videos will be posted...
The General Assembly and Security Council have just announced the election of two current and three new members of the International Court of Justice. Here is the key excerpt of the press release: The General Assembly and the Security Council of the United Nations yesterday elected five Members of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for a term of office...
