In 2005, the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) released a VERY long study on customary international humanitarian law. It is an impressive work, spanning more than 5000 pages, presenting the detailed and expansive views of an organization uniquely situated to know what rules have emerged binding states as a matter of custom, separate and apart from their...
ABC News is reporting that the U.S. Navy recently recalled an openly gay sailor to active duty:Petty Officer 2nd Class Jason Knight says the U.S. Navy knew he was gay, discharged him after he admitted his sexuality, and then recalled him last year to serve in the Middle East. The Navy disputes that Knight was ever officially known by the Pentagon...
The use of comparative jurisprudence in constitutional jurisprudence remain a very controversial issue, and one which I don’t want to go into in detail at this particular time. There’s one thing, however, that strikes me as rather interesting. Namely, at practically all of his appearances at which he discusses the use of foreign law, Justice Scalia loves using the European...
The Southern District of New York last week dismissed a class action lawsuit by plaintiffs alleging that Israel has been systematically committing acts of targeted assassination of suspected terrorists. In the case of Matar v. Dichter, the defendant Avraham Dichter was the former director of GSS, an Israeli security organization. The complaint alleges that the defendant “developed, implemented,...
I have consistently criticized the Bush administration's coddling of Luis Posada Carriles — most recently, its decision to charge him with making false statements during his naturalization interview instead of with committing terrorist acts. Nevertheless, to give credit where credit is due, it seems that the FBI is doing its best to prove that Posada was responsible for the...
Lest I be accused of being overly critical of the US Supreme Court, I will now try to the show what must qualify as one of the worst examples of manipulation and instrumentalization of international law in recent memory. Predictably, that legal manipulation was not a brain child of the Supreme Court, but of the ever inventive lawyers working for...
Last week, I noted that Japan will become a member the ICC in October. Interestingly, the Japanese government has indicated that it will not consider signing an Article 98 agreement with the U.S. after accession. That refusal will not have much practical effect, although there are approximately 50,000 U.S. soldiers on Japanese territory, more than half of whom...
Following up on my previous post, the military commander in charge of Guantanamo Bay, Rear Admiral Harry Harris, has announced that he no longer supports limiting defense attorneys to three visits with their internee clients:But in an interview with The Miami Herald and Saudi Press Agency on Wednesday evening, Rear Adm. Harry Harris, the commander, was supportive of the ongoing...
See this story from Wednesday's FT on a meeting between Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the president of El Salvador, Antonio Saca, to address the growing transnational aspects of gang-related crime. This isn't a first -- the New York City Police Department has seven liaison officers posted in foreign cities, most recently to Santo Domingo on a narcotics-related...
Based on this excerpt, can you guess the identity of this famous commencement speaker? More than any other generation of Americans, yours is tasked with resolving challenges that lie far beyond your doorstep — even far beyond America's borders. Between cell phones and the Internet, you have a world of information literally at your fingertips. And because our world is so...
I understand full well why human rights-minded people in the US feel the need to defend the Hamdan decision. It was, as Dean Harold Koh put it, an attempt at setting the world right after the Bush administration’s assertions of ever increasing executive powers and its decision to keep hundreds of people in legal limbo. I certainly sympathize with that,...
The American Branch of the International Law Association has sent out a call for panel proposals for International Law Weekend, which takes place October 25-27 in New York City. This year's theme is "Toward a New Vision of International Law," and as co-chair of the conference, I encourage proposals from the broad academic community but also from private...
