[As noted earlier, Professor Dan Bodansky is continuing his dispatches on the climate change talks. He is in Copenhagen this week and next, and sends us this initial letter. OJ will be providing additional commentary on the climate change talks -- from the conference, and from other academic commentators -- over the next week. Dan's letter is being cross-posted at...
The Guardian has a leaked copy of what it's calling "the Danish text" (see it here). Apparently, this draft was developed by the Danes along with other developed countries including the United States and the United Kingdom in the hope that it might become the basis for whatever instrument emerges from Copenhagen. As widely expected, the instrument is framed as a "political agreement"...
I'm not usually in the habit of posting on job openings, but I thought this one might warrant wider exposure and expect it will be of interest to some of our more experienced readers (particularly those who've always dreamed of living in Vienna). The IAEA is looking for a new Director for its Office of Legal Affairs. Here's how the IAEA...
Dan Drezner's take at Foreign Policy on the latest Pew Research Poll on U.S. foreign policy attitudes uses a more provocative term than "uninformed," but the point is the same. Can the public be "realist" in its attitudes to the world when those attitudes are based on factual assumptions that don't exactly align with reality? Lots of interesting comments...
With the kerfuffle over the White House gate-crashing gaining all the attention, another flap over gate crashing is flying below the radar. It appears that Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame returned from the dead to meet with Ali Treki, President of the United Nations General Assembly. As reported here: A spokeswoman for Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general,...
Charles Johnson, founder of the conservative blog Little Green Footballs, has announced that he has parted ways with the right-wing in the US. His list of ten reasons is remarkable for its honesty and its perspicacity: 1. Support for fascists, both in America (see: Pat Buchanan, Robert Stacy McCain, etc.) and in Europe (see: Vlaams Belang, BNP, SIOE, Pat Buchanan, etc.) 2....
Several times in the last couple of years I've had the privilege of appearing on panels with Georgetown law professor Vicki Jackson, talking about constitutional comparativism. She is always a pleasure to listen to and engage with on this topic. It's been a hot topic in the last few years, and several OJ'ers have weighed in, including Roger and me....
Let me leave aside for the moment all the leaked memos and stuff. I have a question about Copenhagen that predates all of that. I'm not being snarky - taking on assumption all the climate problems as they have been stated, I do not understand how this exercise manages to overcome the collective action failure problems that have been encountered...
Where is the Obama administration on the Ottawa Landmines Ban Convention? After some clarifications, it appears that the US is conducting a "broad" review of antipersonnel landmine policy and the Ottawa Convention, while maintaining the previous Bush administration stance on an "interim" basis. This Reuter's story, in the Washington Post, gives some of the ins and outs. Meanwhile, the Cartagena...
Mark Perry has an interesting post, with a super-interesting graph, at his blog Carpe Diem, of long-run changes in regional share of global GDP, using historical data sets from Economic Research Service of the US Department of Agriculture. [caption id="attachment_10690" align="alignnone" width="300" caption=""][/caption] As Perry explains: What might be surprising is that the U.S. share of world GDP has been relatively constant for...
According to news reports, the Trial Chamber justifies its refusal to certify appeal on the ground that it "considers the indictee's motion to be unclear, because it is not clear which aspects of the decision he wants to appeal." In case you haven't read our motion for yourself, here is what it says in para. 9, specifically citing to Seselj: Dr....
Friday saw the former Attorney General, John Ashcroft, who helped orchestrate placing the supposed “worst of the worst” at Guantanamo, repeat the same two arguments others have made against federal trials of terrorism suspects: they pose a risk of revealing key intelligence and they increase the risk of another terrorism attack. The first argument has little traction in light of past experience in prosecuting terror trials, prosecutorial discretion in presenting evidence, and judicial administration of the trial. The trial of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani is instructive. An increased risk of attack has also been repeated as an argument against terrorist detentions in the United States. How would detaining or prosecuting terrorism suspects in the United States somehow increase the terror threat? Is there any evidence of this? Is the alternative to keep the detainees in Guantanamo, with the hope that terrorist groups might ignore the fact that they are detained by the United States? Such a claim seems wildly implausible. To the extent that U.S. detention practices are widely known, there seems to be no reason to think that detentions and prosecutions at Guantanamo versus detentions in Illinois, for example, alter the risk that terrorists would target the U.S. If the overall desire and capabilities of terrorists to strike U.S. targets would not change merely because of the location of detentions or prosecutions, perhaps it would alter the targeting of a potential attack. This form of NIMBYism seems based on a highly speculative premise (and a dubious moral claim). No doubt, fear is easily manipulated to motivate officials into avoiding even a speculative, and at best marginal, increased risk of attack. But this kind of fear-mongering fails to present a good reason not to prosecute terrorist suspects in U.S. courts.
If the arguments lack merit, why the orchestrated effort to repeat them?
