Congrats to new Legal Advisor (or almost-Legal Advisor) Harold Koh! And it looks like he will have plenty of stuff to do. Among other things that will be on his agenda: Submitting the Convention on the Rights of the Child to the Senate. According to US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice, this is going to happen. At least she...
I have remained largely silent on Harold Koh's confirmation battle, which is probably about the end this week with a vote in the Senate. I assume that Koh will be confirmed (because I don't think the Senate Democrats would hold a vote if they didn't have the votes). And part of me is glad because, as many of this blog's...
Former Bush Sudan envoy and USAID chief Andrew Natsios has a clearheaded, wise, and knowledgeable op-ed today on the prospects for peace in Sudan. He makes a couple of points that lawyers who only think of Sudan as a proving ground for the ICC should keep in mind: 1) Sudan is a tragedy, but it is probably not an ongoing genocide: First,...
Legend has it that the Danes undermined German efforts to persecute Jews in Denmark by acting in solidarity with them by wearing the yellow star. (And yes I know the story is apocryphal). We can't exactly do the same thing today for Iranians, but one small act of solidarity we can do is make it easier for Iranians to...
The US Supreme Court accepted cert this morning in the case of United States v. Comstock; the cert papers can be found at SCOTUSblog and thanks to Jonathan Adler at Volokh for the tip. Volokh Conspiracy has a series of prior posts on the subject, accessible here. The case is a challenge under the Commerce Clause to the post-sentence civil...
Thanks to my research assistant Heather Bourne, I've been reading a few of Judge Sotomayor's cases involving treaties. And although Julian suggested a few weeks ago that Sotomayor might be a closet sovereigntist, at least one case -- her dissent in Croll v. Croll, 229 F.3d 133 (2d Cir. 2000) -- suggests that she has internationalist leanings as well (subject...
Stephen Walt has a fun piece on the International Relations Guide to Parenting. Here's a taste: [N]o parent can monitor everything a child does (and you'd end up with a pretty neurotic kid if you tried), and you eventually reach a point where physical restraint (in IR terms, "pure defense") isn't practical. So we all rely on deterrence -- "if...
Roger, I was thinking about your post below on the Iran elections, and your comment on the 1981 Algiers Accords, which provide that "it is and from now on will be the policy of the United States not to intervene, directly or indirectly, politically or militarily, in Iran’s internal affairs." Failure to comply, you note in your post, could result in a...
Advisory committees are usually makeweight undertakings, supplying a crumbs-from-the-table kind of federal patronage. Not much work required of committee members to correspond with the associated level of prestige and compensation. For insiders, it must usually be a minor sort of bother. Brief outside "experts" on latest developments, make them feel in the loop, go back to work;...
[OJ Ed. - Professor Guiora had initially submitted the following post in two parts. They appear below in sequence, with the second half responding specifically to Ken Anderson's question.] The ‘limits of power’ is essential to the ‘rule of law’. While perhaps an obvious motto or slogan its application in times of crises is no mean feat. FDR’s decision to interne...
I'm delighted that Amos is guest-blogging with OJ this week, and I've read with great interest his posts - as well as his scholarship and policy writing - on administrative detention and related topics. I have always wanted to ask the following, without a lot of knowledge, as I've never been to Israel and have only reading knowledge both of...
Once more, the online world of the metaverse (a term to encompass online virtual communities like Second Life, Entropia, etc.) reflects "real world" economic transactions. (See this and this for background.) The latest story (via Futurismic) is how an executive of Ebank, a bank set up in the metaverse Eve Online, illegally sold the deposits and collateral of its depositors...
