The UN Committee Against Torture has released their report and recommendation for the United States. It includes a statement that "The State party should cease to detain any person at Guantanamo Bay and close this detention facility." The report is available here. I franky am somewhat surprised that the U.N. Committee flatly called for the closure of...
Sounds like a personal ad on Craigslist. But it’s actually the demographic of the readership of Opinio Juris. Or at least it is based on the recent informal survey I conducted last week. According to the results of the survey as of yesterday, 83% of our readers are men, 92% are highly-educated (and therefore intelligent, no?), and...
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia has dismissed a lawsuit by Khalid El-Masri, a German citizen who alleged he had been kidnapped by the CIA in an "extraordinary rendition" in Macedonia and Afghanistan. I can't find a copy of the opinion online, but the basis of the dismissal appears to be the "state secrets" privilege...
Last year, there was lots of grousing on this blog and elsewhere about U.S. objections to an ICC referral for Sudan. Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch, among others, claimed that an ICC referral "would start saving lives tomorrow." The U.S. relented and ...
Jack Goldsmith and Eric Posner have posted an article responding to the recent criticism regarding their book The Limits of International Law. It is available for download here. Here is the abstract: This essay replies to criticisms advanced at a conference on our book, The Limits of International Law. We criticize the critics for mostly complaining about our methodology,...
My colleague Rick Kirgis recently published a history of the American Society of International Law, from 1906-2006. It's a very interesting institution - one that started with optimism and gaudy names on the masthead (Elihu Root was the first president, three Supreme Court justices were vice presidents, as were two former secretaries of state, and William Howard Taft, then...
The Journal of Philosophy of International Law is open for business, so if there are any theoretical knots you would like to unravel (or tighten, for that matter) you have a new forum in which to do so. I'll be interested to see how JPIL fares over the next few years. Predictions? ...
Attorney General Lord Goldsmith's speech last week made international news for his two paragraph discussion calling for the closure of Guantanamo Bay. In that portion of the speech he argued that closing Guantanamo would be right as a matter of principle and also would "remove what has become a symbol to many - right or wrong- of injustice. The...
The Independent has a special edition today edited by Bono. It includes Condi Rice’s list of ten favorite pieces of music. See the full list with explanations and comments here. I’ll note that there was more pop than I expected, but I’m still waiting for the first Secretary of State who will put the Clash’s London Calling at...
TIME magazine has a nice recap of the successes and setbacks of pro-democracy movements in Arab countries over the last year. In news which will hopefully delight Opinio readers, distinguished comparative law professor Chibli Mallat is running for the Lebanese presidency in a campaign some call symbolic but which he insists is entirely serious. The article focusses on Egypt's Revolt...
Ok, this is a really bizarre story. As reported here, "Nine Afghan asylum seekers who hijacked a plane at gunpoint to get to Britain should have been admitted to the country as genuine refugees and allowed to live and work here freely, the High Court ruled yesterday. In a decision that astonished and dismayed MPs, the Home Office was...
Tony Blair is considering calling for restrictions on the U.K.'s landmark 1998 Human Rights Act, which incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights into national law. Apparently, (i) rogue judges are (ii) using international law to (iii) put criminals back on the streets, (iv) ignore the rights of victims, and (v) endanger national security. I can't imagine where Blair, whose...
