According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 86 countries have abolished the death penalty for all crimes, and another 26 are abolitionist in practice. Virtually every western industrial democracy except the United States has abolished capital punishment. What explains the sharp contrast between U.S. and international attitudes about the death penalty? In brief, I contend that the...
Opinio Juris is pleased to welcome Professor David Sloss as a guest blogger for the next week. Professor Sloss will be familiar to many of our regular readers as a prior contributor and commentator. He teaches a range of international and domestic law subjects at Saint Louis University Law School, and his recent scholarship has focused on foreign relations...
I have written before about the Bush Administration's war on attorneys who defend individuals accused of terrorism. (See here and here.) A new front has now been opened in that war, with the chief U.S. military prosecutor accusing Major Michael Mori, who is representing David Hicks — the Australian scheduled to be the first GITMO detainee tried by...
Reading this post by a former Washington Times reporter is a bit like rubber-necking while driving by an accident. The spectacle is ugly and yet...
One day I will be able to fly a foreign airline like Lufthansa from New York to Seattle. That day is not quite here yet, but (hopefully) it's getting closer. The U.S. and the E.U. announced a long-sought "open skies" agreement Friday that should allow EU based airlines to fly anywhere in the U.S. (and vice versa). Prior...
A U.S. federal appeals court has upheld the use of the "state secrets privilege" to dismiss lawsuit brought by a German national. The underlying lawsuit, brought by Khaled El-Masri in U.S. federal court, alleged that he had been kidnapped by U.S. CIA agents and rendered to a third country for interrogation and torture. The appeals court, like the...
Although it is still unclear whether cluster munitions violate Additional Protocol I's prohibition of attacks that "employ a method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific military objective," Belgium — so often on the cutting edge of international criminal law — isn't waiting to find out. On Thursday, the Belgian Senate passed a law that...
As someone who is interested in the crime of aggression, I was appalled to learn of Switzerland's recent invasion of Liechtenstein. I can only hope that the responsible individuals are punished appropriately:What began as a routine training exercise almost ended in an embarrassing diplomatic incident after a company of Swiss soldiers got lost at night and marched into neighboring...
That at least seems to be the view of one Japanese law-maker. Recent statements by Japanese Prime Minister Abe have sought to distance Japan from a 1993 statement accepting government responsibility for the sexual enslavement of 200,000 Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese, Filipino and other women. These “comfort women” were forced to “service” Japanese military forces during World War II;...
The story yesterday from the WaPo here. (Not really clear what the legal basis for denying the extradition request would be, as described in this post on the International Extradition Blog.) The piece was apparently prompted by Legal Adviser John Bellinger's comments to reporters earlier this week on the margins of talks with EU counterparts: "I do think...
Next week the Yale Journal of International Law will host a conference entitled The “New” New Haven School: International Law—Past, Present, and Future. Here’s a description:A generation ago, Yale Law School gave birth to the so-called "New Haven School of International Law," which insisted that law is more than formal legal institutions, that international law is best studied by evaluating...
NPR had two interesting segments yesterday on the plight of household workers employed (or, rather, held) by foreign diplomats in the US (here and here). If not for diplomatic immunity, the employers would be subject to prosecution for crimes relating to human trafficking and forced labor. From the sound of it, there are many such cases. Two possible responses:...
