The Ninth Circuit last month rendered a controversial decision interpreting the Convention Against Torture. In Ahmed v. Keisler, the court ruled on whether Ahmed should be deported to Bangladesh based on whether it was more likely than not that he would be tortured if removed to Bangladesh. (The panel consisted of Judge Pregerson, a Carter appointee, Judge Rawlinson,...
Lawprof and LA Times columnist Rosa Brooks had a strange but interesting column last week on how torture has become the new "abortion" in U.S. presidential politics. She accuses GOP activists of making the approval of coercive interrogation techniques a litmus test akin to being against abortion. I haven't seen much evidence of this -- McCain is...
My former State Department colleagues, David Bowker of WilmerHale, and David Kaye who just recently moved to UCLA, published an Op-Ed in the NY Times this past weekend. For those of you (like me) who missed it initially, check out this sampling of their Harper's Index-like spin on GTMO Facts in advance of the Court's consideration of Boumediene v....
Details here — this on the claims filed by the families of Chinese dissidents jailed on evidence coughed up by Yahoo to Chinese authorities. The settlement terms weren't disclosed, but Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang issued an apology to the families and money is changing hands. The issues posed here aren't going to go away (and Yahoo isn't the...
A team of FBI investigators has concluded that the September killings of 14 Iraqi civilians by the U.S. military contractor Blackwater violated deadly-force rules security contractors. Although the investigation is continuing, this seems to settle part of the factual dispute over the Blackwater shootings. But can Blackwater's personnel face criminal prosecution? I am not sure, actually. This is a bit...
Which nation has the top brand name? It seems strange to think of the branding of nations, but upon reflection we do it all the time. When we think of a country like Australia, Iran, Switzerland or Sudan we associate certain positive or negative qualities to each nation. A recent study reveals that the nations with...
As widely anticipated, Ban Ki-moon has named Serge Brammertz, a deputy prosecutor at the ICC and the head of the UN commission investigating the murder of Lebanase Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri, to succeed Carla del Ponte as the Chief Prosecutor of the ICTY. Brammertz will take over the position on January 1, 2008. As I discussed in September, the ICTY's...
Dr. Danilo Türk, international law professor, former diplomat, and former Assistant UN Secretary General, has “decisively won Slovenia's presidential election Sunday, the electoral commission announced.” (See the AFP and the VOA reports.) Dr. Türk, an international lawyer by training, was ambassador to the UN from 1992 to 2000, making him the longest serving Slovenian ambassador abroad. According to his bio on...
I recently reviewed the proposed student edits of a forthcoming article in the Notre Dame Law Review. They are doing an outstanding job, but I have one small quibble. In the process of editing, the student editors asked me for a copy of three documents that I had on file and that were cited in the article as...
This past weekend was the second annual Empirical Legal Studies Conference at NYU. I had a colleague attend and he said it was an outstanding conference. Plenty of empirical research on courts, corporations, criminal law, bankruptcy, intellectual property, torts, securities, etc. But if you looked on the program for something on international law, you would come up...
Surely, we can come up with a funnier list of treaties than this. Or, perhaps not. As I first noted on joining Opinio Juris, international law jokes are far and few between. Of course, given my initial foray into that arena, I'm not sure I'm well suited to changing this fact. But, perhaps some of our...
I began in academia after the Iraq war began, and have been puzzled — and at times frustrated — by the lack of student attention to or interest in the war. One could spend weeks on campus at MU and never see evidence that this is a state university in a country at war. (I arrived at school...
