OK, it's not quite 1780 all over again, but the NYT reports that the U.S. and France have joined forces to protest the application of London's "congestion" pricing scheme to employees of their respective embassies. The U.S-French position (which is joined by a number of other countries) is buttressed by the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. I believe the...
[Tom Lee is a professor of law at Fordham Law School.] On February 16, 2007, the Sixth Circuit (Keith) published a unanimous opinion in Tavaeras v. Tavarez, a suit brought under the Alien Tort Statute (28 U.S.C. 1350). That hoary and storied statute states: “The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for...
Canada is so close to the United States — yet sometimes it seems thousands of miles away politically. Exhibit 1: the Supreme Court of Canada has unanimously struck down a controversial security-certificate process used to detain terrorism suspects on the ground that the process violates the right to life, liberty, and security of the person:The security certificate process is...
There is an interesting story in today's New York Times about the prosecution of a man in Montenegro for a murder he allegedly committed in New York in 1990. According to the report, authorities in 1990 found Mary Beal in pieces, stuffed in garbage bags that were strewn in Brooklyn near the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge, the police...
It's that time of year. This week, students from around the United States are competing in the regional rounds of the Phillip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition. Meanwhile, national competitions are taking place all over the globe, all leading up to the international rounds in Washington D.C. at the end of March. Nor is...
As I mentioned earlier, the International Court of Justice will be announcing its judgment in the Bosnia-Serbia genocide case on Monday, February 26, at 10 a.m. GMT +1:00. The following day, Tuesday, February 27, at 14:00 GMT +1:00, the International Criminal Court will announce its first indictments in the Sudan Darfur investigations. The question for the ICC will...
One hundred eighty-eight years ago today, on February 22, 1819, the United States and Spain signed the Adams-Onís Treaty (also known as the Florida Purchase Treaty or the Transcontinental Treaty of 1819) by which the United States acquired Florida from Spain and the two countries settled their boundary dispute regarding the western territories. Thanks to the treaty we became...
A fascinating debate has been taking place this week concerning a post on Instapundit in which Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, advocated assassinating Iranian atomic scientists and "radical mullahs." Here is Reynold's original post: IRAN IN IRAQ: Smoking guns. This has been obvious for a long time anyway, and I don't understand why...
In this excellent article in Foreign Policy, Daniel Kahneman and Jonathan Renshon argue that human psychology explains the tendency for hawks to win out over doves on decisions to go to war. As decisions makers weigh arguments for and against the use of force, psychological biases — rather than politics or strategy — may pre-dispose them toward hawkishness: Social and...
David Ignatius notes in today's WaPo America's worsening reputation among our "friends" in the Middle East: Let's start with some poll numbers presented at the Doha conference by Shibley Telhami, a University of Maryland professor and a fellow of the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, which co-sponsored the conference with the Qatari foreign ministry. The polling was done last year...
Honestly, it's things like this that explain why I sometimes fail to choose my words carefully when I'm criticizing the Bush Administration. From the Sparta Independent, courtesy of Americablog:To the Editor: I have a son going to Iraq this summer. I was able to afford to buy state-of-the-art body armor for his protection. Unfortunately there are many parents that are...
How much of a disaster is the Iraq War? If the editors of Foreign Policy are correct, a major one. Here, according to the magazine's most recent cover story, are the top 10 "winners" in Iraq: 1. Iran 2. Moqtada al-Sadr 3. Al-Qaeda 4. Samuel Huntington (for his "clash of civilizations" thesis) 5. China 6. Arab Dictators 7. The Price of Oil (and not from...
