Is there anything new or useful to say about "International Law and the Israeli-Arab Dispute"? Well, a number of scholars (including Ken, Roger, and myself) will try to come up with something next Monday, May 17, during a conference at Northwestern University School of Law. This is one of the few subjects intersecting international law where there is way too...
It's a done deal: President Obama will nominate U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court tomorrow. Kagan will be the first nominee for the Court since the 1970s who has no judicial experience, although I doubt this will be a problem for her (it may even be an asset). As Kevin has already noted, Kagan will probably...
Last week, Russia announced with some fanfare that it had captured several Somali pirates who had attacked a Russian-flagged vessel. It had also announced that (like the U.S.), these pirates would be brought back to Russia for trial. And then yesterday, Russia announced...
Ian Hurd, the distinguished scholar of international organizations (e.g., After Anarchy) at Northwestern University, has posted to SSRN a short response to an article much-discussed here at OJ, Michael Glennon, "The Blank Prose Crime of Aggression." Professor Hurd's response is titled, "How Not to Argue Against the Crime of Aggression." It is not long, elegantly argued and usefully systematic, and...
As most people probably know, Duke's Guy-Uriel Charles wrote a devastating blog post criticizing the lack of diversity in Harvard Law School hiring while Elena Kagan was Dean. (Short version: 28 of 29 were white, one was asian; 23 of the 29 were men.) The White House has now pushed back against the post by releasing what strikes me as...
Joe Lieberman has just rolled out a bill (text here) which would strip individuals associated with foreign terrorist groups of their US citizenship. He's been playing this as if it were a minor statutory fix. It's true, as he's been stressing, that current law terminates citizenship for "entering, or serving in, the armed forces of a foreign state if (a) ...
My colleague Marc DeGirolami has a guest post over at PrawfsBlawg reacting to an op-ed in today's New York Times by Jean-François Copé, the the majority leader of the French National Assembly, in which Copé defends banning the burqa and the niqab. While Marc sees that the argument that the burqa runs counter to Western culture "is not without considerable force"...
Professor David Bosco has started a new blog focusing on international organizations, "Eye on IOs." I like his subtitle -- "A blog on the progress and pitfalls of international organizations." It reminds me of a chapter I wrote addressing "progress and paradox" in international security cooperation. (It is nice to have company as a moderate on questions of international institution...
My Volokh Co-Conspirator John Elwood notes the reference to foreign courts, if not precisely law, in Justice Breyer's comment on closing the SCOTUS main front door to visitors....
Australia's government has announced that Australia will accede to the COE Cybercrime Convention (and not, as many are reporting that it will merely "sign" the Convention, which, I suppose, reflects the media's continued inability or unwillingness to sort out the basic issues of treaty formation). With Australian accession, the COE Cybercrime Convention will have 27 states parties. It remains the only cyber-specific multilateral treaty out there. And...
At last night's White House Correspondents Dinner, President Obama cracked a funny joke about his administration's use of Predator Drones for targeted killings. From the Politico: — "The Jonas Brothers are here! ...
