In association with the International Commission of Jurists

General

11 Nov

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...

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11 Nov

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]...

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10 Nov

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...

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07 Nov

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...

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07 Nov

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...

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07 Nov

This past September, I was a speaker at a conference on Law, Ethics and the War on Terror that was organized by Geoff Corn at the South Texas College of Law. The conference is now available as a video-stream. Part one is here and part two is here. The other panelists were incredibly impressive including senior military officials, prominent defense attorneys, and academics...

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06 Nov

Remember the halcyon days of the election when Obama was a socialist and a marxist?  Well, funny thing. According to the RNC, he's actually a moderate Republican: In all, with Barack Obama's promises to cut taxes, merit pay for public school teachers, and renewed offshore drilling, I would say he simply ran the most successful moderate Republican presidential campaign since Dwight...

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05 Nov

Or should that be President of the World?  The global reactions have been overwhelming, not the least because Obama carries in himself a mixed global identity.  As Philippe Sands put it:  “People feel he is a part of them because he has this multiracial, multiethnic and multinational dimension.  He represents, for people in so many different communities and cultures, a...

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