During one of his campaign stops yesterday, President Bush touted his administration's supposed success in combating al-Qaeda. One of his examples was Pakistan:We've kept the terrorists from achieving their key goal, to overthrow governments across the broader Middle East and to seize control. Instead, the governments they targeted -- such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia -- have become some...
A nice counterpoint to Peter's discussion of the Administration's contempt (my word, not his) for international law: Arianna Huffington has a new post that says John Bolton's nomination may be in serious trouble:Item: Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar abruptly pulls the plug on today's scheduled vote on John Bolton. Speculation: Lincoln Chafee wouldn't play nice and was ready to...
Reading through President Bush's speech yesterday on the commissions, war crimes, and secret detentions, it's striking how he repeatedly emphasized legality. At several points he asserted the lawfulness of the secret detention and of interrogation techniques (at one point noting that the program "has been subject to multiple legal reviews by the Department of Justice and CIA lawyers"). ...
Bobby Chesney (former guest blogger at Opinio Juris), Steve Vladeck (of Prawfsblawg) and Tung Yin (the Yin Blog) have just launched a new national security law blog titled National Security Advisors. Here is their description of the blog: Few areas of law or policy have been as important as national security during the five-year period following 9/11, and none have...
As I predicted, the blogosphere (at least Marty Lederman at Balkinization) is hard at work dissecting (and attacking) the latest Administration proposal to authorize military commissions (a copy of the bill is here). Marty's initial reaction is that the bill would authorize all sorts of terrible things that are inconsistent with the Geneva Conventions. But even if the bill...
President Bush announced today that he is transferring 14 suspects from CIA custody to detention at Guantanamo Bay, including alleged Al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheik Mohammed. This would, according to Bush, remove all detainees from CIA custody. During the same speech, Bush argued that the CIA prisons had been crucial to the ability of the U.S. government to...
I wanted to offer one other quick report on last week’s symposium at Pepperdine on the Rookie Year of the Roberts Court. As you might expect, Hamdan featured prominently in the discussion. In essence we saw with Professors Doug Kmiec and Erwin Chemerinsky a tale of two Hamdans. You can view both of their presentations here under...
UN Watch has issued this comprehensive assessment of the first three months of the new UN Human Rights Council. Here's the bottom line from the executive summary: The imposition of public scrutiny to the election process led to some improvements: former Commission members Sudan and Zimbabwe did not seek Council membership this year, and Iran was not elected. However, the...
Following up on my earlier post, the ICTR isn't happy that Tanzanian police have arrested Gakwaya. The Tribunal's Registrar has released the following statement:Following the arrest of Defence Counsel Callixte Gakwaya, Lead Counsel for the accused Yusuf Munyakasi, on Friday 1 September 2006, the Registrar of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), Mr Adama Dieng, expressed his strong...
I have to say I disagree with Roger and John Knox about August’s case of the month. As important as I think the ATCA has become, I think the case Julian flagged last week--NRDC v. EPA—has far greater implications. Indeed, there’s already a fairly lengthy discussion of the case over at the Volokh Conspiracy (see here and here). ...
Alan Wolfe started a thread over at The New Republic’s new Open University by suggesting that the recent APSA was too focused on things foreign as opposed to things domestic. I was there, too (to do a panel on birthright citizenship and to take in the excellent roundtable on international tribunals, among a few others). But my impression,...
One of the more interesting parts of the symposium last week at Pepperdine on the Rookie Year of the Roberts Court were the comments of Supreme Court correspondents David Savage, Gina Holland and Marcia Coyle. You can view their comments here. I thought it was quite interesting that Marcia Coyle, Washington Bureau Chief and U.S. Supreme Court Correspondent for...
