Professor Ngai goes to the heart of the matter when she alludes to a literature on colonialism that takes issue with an essentializing nationalism. In my work on Degetau and on other figures of the intellectual elite of the American imperial periphery, I seek to offer an alternative to the nationalist perspective that has long dominated post-colonial historiography, in which...
[Professor Mae Ngai is Lung Professor of Asian American Studies and Professor of History, Columbia University] I especially appreciate Christina Burnett’s examination of Federico Degetau’s “legal cosmopolitanism” in Gonzales v. Williams. Burnett shows that intellectuals in the colonial periphery made a unique contribution to the legal discourse on empire and citizenship. Degetau’s critique, that the American wish to “nationalize” Puerto Ricans...
[Professor Christina Duffy Burnett is Associate Professor of Law, Columbia University] My article in the latest issue of the Virginia Journal of International Law forms part of a larger project in which my goal is to tell a different kind of constitutional history of empire. Rather than focus on the question that has long occupied constitutional historians of U.S. imperialism—whether the...
At most of the museums here in Rome, children get reduced-price or free admission only if they are EU citizens. For us weakened-dollar Americans, that makes a nontrivial difference. We are going to the Villa Borghese later today. At 13€ per person, with two kids, that will be 52 Euros – more than 75 bucks. A...
The persecution continues:Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said Monday the government would press ahead with plans to fingerprint ethnic Roma, including children - a move branded as discriminatory by European Union officials. Frattini - the EU's top justice official before he joined Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's cabinet - was commenting on remarks made Sunday by Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, who...
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has rejected an appeal by Maher Arar, a Canadian national who is suing various U.S. government officials for injuries suffered during his "extraordinary rendition" shortly after 9/11 (h/t to Vince Vitowsky). The court, via Judge Jose Cabranes, held that Arar had failed to state a claim under the Torture Victim...
The Virginia Journal of International Law will continue its partnership with Opinio Juris this week with an online symposium featuring three articles recently published in VJIL Vol. 48-4, available here. Our discussion on Tuesday will focus on the constitutional history of American empire at the turn of the twentieth century. In her article, “They say I am not an American…”: The...
As part of the effort to prove itself more like other disciplines and to move away from the trade school model, there's been a clear trend towards peer-reviewed law journals. Witness this out of Harvard, for law generally. It's a move mostly to be applauded, with the caution that peer review can perpetuate orthodoxies in a way that...
This report suggests that this question will soon be considered by the awkwardly named Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. The question arises in one of the ECCC's first cases where the defendant was allegedly given a royal pardon from an earlier domestic conviction for genocide. On the face of it, this doesn't seem a hard question...
I recently blogged about Trial Chamber I's stunning decision to stay Thomas Lubanga Dyilo's trial because of the Prosecutor's failure to disclose exculpatory evidence to the defense. The Court held a hearing on the 24th to determine whether, in light of its decision, Lubanga should be released. It has yet to reach a conclusion — but if the...
The NY Times Week in Review has an article written by Graham Bowley on the effect of recent attacks by Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) on Nigeria’s oil infrastructure and the effects of these attacks on world oil prices. The piece begins:When armed rebels from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta attacked...
Nick Kristof asks the right questions about the lack of outrage against Robert Mugabe among the leaders of African states and discusses what may be the best solution to the horrors that have gripped Zimbabwe over these past months: Africa’s rulers often complain, with justice, that the West’s perceptions of the continent are disproportionately shaped by buffoons and tyrants rather than...
