In association with the International Commission of Jurists

General

01 Oct

I think so, even though it's not obviously consistent with the requirement restricting presidential eligibility to "natural born" citizens.  I make the case in this essay, just posted as part of a symposium on McCain's constitutional eligibility (in light of his Canal Zone birth) at the Michigan Law Review's online First Impressions (with other contributions from Jack Chin, Larry Solum, Daniel Tokaji,...

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30 Sep

I think it’s over. As is true with notational wars, it takes another, more serious threat to take care of the displacement. The end isn’t in the way of armistice or surrender. The wars on drugs and crime continue to be fought under more prosaic headings, but they no longer have a hold on the national imagination. And in the...

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28 Sep

With all the attention to the bailout legislation last week, few noticed how much the Senate did on the treaty front.  But, as I suggested in my recent post, the Senate had an opportuntity to set a record in terms of its treaty actions and it easily did so, passing resolutions of advice and consent for some 78 treaties (the whole list can be...

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26 Sep

"I, for one, cannot think of anything more presidential than suspending your presidential campaign! Being president demands suspending all kinds of things: habeas corpus, Gitmo prisoners...

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26 Sep

Here's the latest: the Western Climate Initiative among seven US governors and four Canadian provincial premiers, takes shape to create a market-based cap-and-trade emissions reduction program (report here from the NY Times). The program emerges from the terms of this February 2007 agreement.  Leaving aside the question of whether this qualifies as a compact (sure looks like one), are this and similar undertakings...

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25 Sep

Noah Feldman has this long think piece in the New York Times Magazine.  Feldman deftly describes for an intelligent lay audience a fork-in-the-road moment for the Court and its posture towards international law and institutions.  We have the sovereigntists on the one hand and the internationalists on the other.  Each had a major win last Term, the internationalists with Boumediene...

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20 Sep

The letters section of the Times is probably not long for the world but it does still have the function of pulling out pithy representative statements from what would otherwise be lost in the haystack of the paper's website comments section.  So here's this from Northwestern University lawprof Steve Calabresi on Adam Liptak's excellent piece from Friday on the flagging international stature of...

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18 Sep

The oft-discussed relationship of the United States and International Law will be the theme of this year's International Law Weekend of the American Branch of the International Law Association.  The conference will be held October 16-18, 2008, at the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, 42 West 44th Street, New York City.  The kick-off panel will focus...

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18 Sep

A couple of years ago, I examined whether popular conceptions of the current Bush Administration's disdain for treaties had quantitative support.  I found to my surprise that the Bush Administration did not appear to be concluding significantly fewer treaties (whether solely pursuant to Article II or to all forms of U.S. agreement-making combined).   Looking just at Article II treaty activity in...

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17 Sep

I want to follow up Roger's post on law professor sign on amicus briefs with a really basic, genuinely naive question.  I am not a litigator and do not know very much about litigation.  I have never really understood the rationale behind courts accepting amicus briefs - law professor briefs, or any other kind.  I'm not putting this as a...

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12 Sep

I'm up for tenure this year, which helps explain (I hope) in part my lighter-than-usual blogging of late.  One of the things that has come up in the process is how my home institution (Temple) compares to other law schools in terms of the timing at which tenure and promotion are offered.  Temple hires folks starting out in law teaching as...

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12 Sep

My law school (Washington College of Law, American University), the ABA national security committee of the international law section, and the Federalist Society are putting on a one-day conference on Friday, September 19, from 10-4 pm, in DC, in case anyone is interested.  I unfortunately will not be there, though I am still listed on the program, but it has...

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