Is the Senate finally entering the fray on the torture debate? It is being reported that the Senate intelligence committee may be moving toward opening an investigation of CIA detention and interrogation techniques, as well as the CIA practice of rendition, whereby detainees are sent to third countries. If a formal investigation happens (which will only come about if there...
With the NATO summit only 8 days away, in a speech in Germany yesterday, Senator Hillary Clinton called for a direct role for NATO to stop the killing in Darfur. (For the foreign policy wonks out there, it is interesting to note that she made public the fact that she got help on the speech from Richard Holbrooke, Sandy Berger...
Japan announced today that it would allow fishing expeditions to Okinotorishima, an obscure island 1000 miles southeast of Japan. For Law of the Sea aficionados, this sets up a pending battle over the size of Japan's "exclusive economic zone" because if Okinotorishima is merely some "rocks" (as China says), Japan's EEZ is substantially smaller than it currently claims. Countries have...
As further reports of UN peacekeeper atrocities continue to flow out of the D.R. Congo, an interesting legal puzzle arises: Can those peacekeepers be prosecuted for war crimes by the ICC? The answer is probably yes, no thanks to the U.S., which has been introducing annual resolutions in the Security Council granting immunity to UN peacekeepers since 2002, but which...
As the ICC gears up to issue its first arrest warrants against rebel leaders in Uganda, church leaders there are warning that the warrants could upset already fraying peace negotiations. I don't know anything about the Ugandan situation except that the Ugandan government was the one that referred the case to the ICC, has been trying to withdraw the...
The NAFTA Secretariat posted this decision on Friday remanding to the U.S. Department of Commerce a decision by Commerce to impose anti-dumping penalties on Oil Country Tubular Goods from Mexico. This decision is authorized by Chapter 19 of NAFTA, which authorizes the formation of Binational Arbitration Panels to review antidumping determinations made by domestic authorities (in this case, the U.S....
In a nomination that has been widely-expected, John B. Bellinger, III, formerly the legal adviser for the National Security Council under Condoleezza Rice, has been nominated to be the new Legal Adviser of the State Department, succeeding William Taft, IV.According to a short bio available online, prior to joining the NSC, Bellinger was a counsel for national security matters...
I should first thank Prof. Heller for adding his insightful comments to our blog. I hope to return the favor at his blog-home at the Yin Blog. Both he and Peggy have useful comments, although I think both are reading much more into my post than I myself intended (but I suppose that is my own fault)....
Julian admits that he may be inferring too much when he criticizes the LA Times op-ed written by the NRDC in opposition to the Bush administration's decision to remain outside the Kyoto Protocol as a wrong-headed rejection of US national interest in favor of internationalism. I agree that Julian inferred too much. I am no expert on global warming, but...
Today's Los Angeles Times contains a predictable op-ed condemning the U.S. for failing to join the Kyoto treaty to reduce global warming, which will go into effect next Wednesday. In addition to attacking Bush, the Republicans, and Michael Crichton for being the stooges of the energy industry, the writer throws in this line, which is fast congealing into...
Over at Slate, Peter Brooks (who holds a joint appointment in Law and English at UVA) has this post on the August 2002 Bybee torture memo . Brooks sees Bybee's failure to follow the "plain meaning" statutory interpretation guidelines reaffirmed by Chief Justice Rehnquist in LEOCAL v. Ashcroft, in which the Court noted that we construe statutory language "in its...
From the department of obscure court decisions, the ICJ ruled today that it has no jurisdiction over a dispute between Liechtenstein and Germany over decisions of Germany, in and after 1998, to treat certain property of Liechtenstein nationals as German assets having been ‘seized for the purposes of reparation or restitution, or as a result of the state of war’ -...
