I continue to be amazed when educated people say that international law is not binding on the United States, or that international law cannot be enforced against a superpower, or that the United States can violate international law whenever it wants to, or that international law doesn’t exist.Let’s take the strongest of these claims: the enforcement claim. Let’s stipulate...
When I was a kid with my eyes glued to the silver screen, I wondered why Ingrid Bergmann and Humphrey Bogart were taking their sweet time in getting out of Paris. There they were with German tanks proceeding relentlessly toward them and the noise of artillery fire in the distance. But where was the Luftwaffe? Where were...
Should President Harry S Truman be regarded today as a war criminal for ordering the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki sixty years ago? If history indicts him for the two events, I would argue that as to Count Two, the bombing of Nagasaki, he was clearly guilty and would have deserved the death sentence. The horror of...
Our government is presently immobilized, like Buridan’s ass, between North Korea’s nuclear development program and Iran’s. Yesterday Iran removed United Nations seals on uranium processing equipment at its Isfahan nuclear site, making the plant fully operational. At the same time across the world in Beijing a deadlock was reported in the six-power nuclear disarmament talks. North Korea intends to go...
Many of our younger international scholars are rightfully insisting that nations own up to their past atrocities. They are pressing Japan to fully disclose the enslavement of Korean “comfort women” who were forced to accompany the rampaging Japanese armies in China during the second world war. The scholars are demanding that Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia give a full...
I only recently noticed this op-ed by Cuba expert Wayne Smith, a former head of the U.S. Interests section in Havana, noting that Cuba could easily claim the use of Guantanamo Bay as a detention center violates the Agreement between the United States and Cuba for the Lease of Lands for Coaling Stations, the treaty which is the basis for...
I didn’t intend to sound disparaging about humanitarian intervention, but when the above title occurred to me I just couldn’t resist using it. Come to think of it, Howard Cosell would have been pleased; the title “tells it like it is.”The international legality of humanitarian intervention is on my mind these days because I’m trying to scribble out a Foreword...
I also want to welcome Professor D'Amato to Opinio Juris. And, in the typical Opinio Juris fashion, I want to welcome him by immediately taking exception to some of the arguments he put forward in his inaugural post.I agree that Judge Roberts should be held responsible for the D.C. Circuit's decision in Hamdan as much as if he had written...
As the law school world peruses the briefs and opinions of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, one of his important cases that just about everyone omits is Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (D.C.Cir. July 14,2005). The reason for ignoring it is, presumably, that it was a 3-0 decision in which Judge Roberts remained silent. ...
We are very fortunate (and a little daunted) to have Professor Anthony D’Amato of Northwestern University School of Law guest blogging with us for the next two weeks. For most of our readers, Tony won’t need any introduction. Besides his extensive list of publications (over 20 books and 110 articles) on international criminal law, human rights, foreign relations law...
The United Nations Human Rights Commission is an easy target for UN critics, but this doesn't mean that they don't deserve the disdain and contempt that is usually heaped on them. Case in point: eight UN human rights experts have issued a statement condemning the current US-Russia sponsored "Road Map" talks between Israel and Palestine because the negotiations currently do...
This report suggests that the international and domestic human rights groups have turned up the pressure on Iraq's new government to join the ICC. Indeed, this report indicates that the Iraqis drafting their permanent constitution are considering an "international law" supremacy clause that would subordinate domestic Iraqi laws, including constitutional laws, to international treaties, thereby giving institutions like the...
