It's been a difficult week for the global campaign to abolish the death penalty. First, Afghanistan executed 15 prisoners, ending a three year moratorium on executions:The mass execution took place Sunday evening according to Afghan law, which calls for condemned prisoners to be shot to death, said Abdul Salam Ismat, the prisons chief. During the 1996-2001 rule of Afghanistan's hard-line...
Yesterday's announcement that Al Gore and the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have won the Nobel Peace Prize came as a surprise to many. Just reading the comments over at the Volokh Conspiracy gives one a flavor of some of the skepticism. For those who do not follow these things closely, it is fair to ask, "What...
Here is the Nobel Committee's explanation of the award, which Gore shares with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:Indications of changes in the earth's future climate must be treated with the utmost seriousness, and with the precautionary principle uppermost in our minds. Extensive climate changes may alter and threaten the living conditions of much of mankind. They may induce large-scale...
Opinio Juris is pleased to welcome this guest post from Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch. He now maintains his own blog "The View from Geneva," on which he has cross-posted this contribution. No one’s talking about it, but soon — perhaps in early November — the UN General Assembly will be asked to approve the...
Congratulations to Opinio Juris alum Janet Levit on being named Interim Dean at Tulsa Law School. IntLawGrrls has the story here and the Tulsa Press release is here. Janet will be a terrific asset to Tulsa during this transition. We wish her the best in her new role! ...
I read with great interest the transcript of the oral argument in Medellin yesterday. From my perspective Justice Breyer had the best grasp of the potential impact of this case on international adjudication. Several times Justice Breyer asked about whether the rule we apply in this case will also adversely affect our recognition of decisions of other international...
This episode brings into pretty clear relief the potential downside of congressional foreign policymaking (front-page story today in the NY Times; you can find the resolution here). I'm surprised that the Bush Administration hasn't made some sort of constitutional argument against the measure. It might be a tough one to make, but that's hardly stopped this Administration from...
Meet Ann Coulter, Fox News media darling, best-selling author, syndicated columnist — and raving anti-Semite. From an exchange with Donny Deutsch on CNBC: DEUTSCH: Let me ask you a question. We're going to get off strengths and weakness for a second. If you had your way, and all of your — forget that any of them...
For those who've not yet heard enough about Medellin, the transcript is now available here. I've only had time to give it a quick glance, but thought I'd pass on my initial reactions and open the door for other comments. I guess what's most interesting about the argument was what didn't happen; although touched tangentially, the argument spent...
can be found here. Lyle Denniston of SCOTUSBlog's report on the argument can be found here. My reading of the transcript, which is not as thorough as Lyle's actually reporting on it, suggests that there is substantial hostility to the direct enforceability of ICJ judgments (Scalia, Roberts, Alito) and somewhat less substantial hostility from those same justices to the...
Further to Julian's comments on Medellin, make sure to check out this post on the Volokh Conspiracy explaining how, if Medellin wins, Hillary Clinton and the "World Court" ("ICJ" doesn't sound scary enough) could conspire to repeal the Second Amendment. ...
For what its worth, I should be on Kevin's favorite news source, the Fox News Channel, around 3 p.m. New York time today discussing issues related to the Medellin case. *3:30 p.m. Actually, it wasn't worth much, since I got bumped for a breaking news story on the Cleveland school shootings. Oh well, that's cable news! ...
