In association with the International Commission of Jurists

General

20 Feb

Cross-posted at Balkinization It felt like a lively discussion Friday at the panel hosted by American University scholar Dan Marcus on “Guantanamo Detainees – What Next?” (Many thanks to Ken for plugging it earlier in the week. I take it the session will at some point be available among webcasts on the law school website.) Jack Goldsmith gave a keynote...

|
17 Feb

A proposition at the center of much international development work in the past decade or more has been the importance of institutions - whether one talks about "good governance" or the "rule of law" or other terms referring to institutions of governance in a society that permit stability across time.  The claim has always seemed to engage the happy coincidence...

|
16 Feb

My home institution, Washington College of Law, American University, will be putting on an important lunchtime program on Friday, February 18,12-2 pm, on the vexed question of what happens next for the Guantanamo detainees. I am committed to another program that day, so I won't be attending, but this program has a stellar lineup of commenters. Jack Goldsmith will deliver the keynote address and the commenters are Robert Chesney, Deborah Pearlstein, and Steve Vladeck; Dan Marcus will moderate. My guess is that the Q&A will be outstanding as well, as knowledgeable people from DC organizations and the various government agencies have told me they plan to attend. The program is below the fold, including information on signing up and CLE credit.
|
14 Feb

For the next five months, I will be a Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer in Law at East China University of Political Science and Law in Shanghai. For a variety of reasons related to my status as a Fulbright Grantee as well as being a blogger living within the range of Chinese internet censors, I will take a sabbatical from blogging here...

|
06 Feb

Bobby Chesney has posted to SSRN an important draft paper on the law surrounding the targeting of Anwar Al-Awlaki, the Yemini-American radical Islamist cleric in hiding presumably in Yemen.  It is still in draft form (to appear in final form in the Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law), and Bobby is still revising and soliciting comments from knowledgeable folks.  Here is his comment at Lawfare; the draft paper is up on SSRN at this link. My comments on an initial read?  First, I agree with the overall structure of the analysis — the questions and the order of raising them.  One observation is that I would put less weight on sovereign consent for the jus ad bellum analysis (ie, Yemen permitting the US action).  This is in large part because in my view the bedrock international law principle for the United States is, and always has been, that although territorial integrity is foundational to legal sovereignty, a state that is either unwilling or unable to control the use of its territory by non-state actor terrorist or other armed groups acting against other sovereigns — safe havens — gives up its sovereignty and right to territorial integrity to that extent.  Whether one sees it as an exception to the territorial integrity rule, or instead that the state is failing to exercise sovereignty and so does not have it at that point over the relevant territory, it seems to me a far more important legal principle in addressing terrorist groups than sovereign consent.  The politics and diplomacy of that might be a very different matter, of course. My view of “naked” self-defense outside of armed conflict remains as it has been since the beginning of this debate over targeting, as a formal category.  However, as a factual matter regarding Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, I believe that the connections between it and AQ proper are sufficient to bring it within the AUMF; at one point I didn’t think that was the case, but I have certainly been persuaded otherwise as more facts have emerged.  In that case, the Obama administration, which has various political and domestic legal reasons for preferring the AUMF-armed conflict characterization over the naked self-defense characterization, is on firm ground.  It would in my view be on firm ground either way.  However, I remain fully committed to the view that self-defense as an independent category remains available as a legal rationale, and that it will be necessary and appropriate in future circumstances.
|
05 Feb

I'm dashing off to China in a few hours, but I couldn't resist a brief post on the Second Circuit's denial of rehearing on Kiobel v. Royal Dutch.  Does anyone doubt this case is headed for the Supreme Court?  Which is not to say that I disagree with the panel majority on the merits. indeed, I have offered a full-scale...

|
03 Feb

(Note:  I'm going to pull down most of this post, although alas it makes Peter's comment not relevant to anything.  Martined over at VC points out a couple of mistakes.  I think I"m going to delete anything but the reference to the news article.  Peter, apologies I've untethered your comment!) The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports that the Vatican has refused service of...

|
02 Feb

Perhaps not getting the coverage it might in the face of more important developments elsewhere: Pakistan continues to hold Raymond Davis, a US government official posted to Lahore, in the killing of two Pakistanis last week despite protests from the US that the official is entitled to diplomatic immunity.  Here's a report from the LA Times; here's a more detailed...

|
01 Feb

Richard Falk, professor of international law at Princeton and U.N. Special Rapporteur for the situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian territories, is rejecting calls for him to resign from his U.N. position due to alleged comments he made about a 9/11 conspiracy theory. NEW YORK – Richard Falk, UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Palestinian territories...

|