Imagine a man who professes over and over his unending love for a woman but who knows nothing of where she was born or who her parents were or where she went to school or what her life had been until he came along--and furthermore, doesn't care to learn. What would you think of such a person? Yet we appear...
A few months ago, I noted the repeated failure of Ignacio Carrillo Prieto, the special prosecutor investigating past government abuses in Mexico, to indict former president Luis Echeverria on genocide charges. Carrillo has finally succeeded: a Mexican court of appeals held on Friday that it had sufficient evidence to charge Echeverria with genocide in connection with the "Tlatelolco massacre,"...
One small sidenote about Hamdan that struck me this morning: the superiority of the blogosphere over the mainsteam media to address breaking news such as Supreme Court decisions. Were any of you just dying to know what Adam Liptak or Linda Greenhouse of the New York Times thought about Hamdan? I had very little interest in their take...
Georgetown's new faculty blog has some great stuff on Hamdan, including summaries of a recent panel about Hamdan that included Neal Katyal (lead counsel for Hamdan), David Luban, Mark Tushnet, and Carlos Vázquez. (There also is an audio of the panel available here and a C-Span video available here). ...
Excellent news out of Manila: last week the Philippines became the 125th country to ban the use of capital punishment for all crimes, a move that commutes the death sentences of nearly 1,200 prisoners to life imprisonment. This is the second time that the Philippines has abolished capital punishment; although the country's constitution eliminated the death penalty in 1987,...
For the Hamdan-weary among you — and my thanks to Peter, Roger, Julian and the others who have saved me from having to read the opinion myself — there's a fascinating article in today's Daily Mail (UK) discussing the British government's belief in 1961 that the only way to defend Hong Kong against an attack by the Chinese would have...
Okay, maybe not that new, and maybe not exactly what you had in mind for the beach. But in case you missed it when it was published (I had), there’s a promising-looking law review that’s recently come on stream, the Journal of International Law and International Relations, out of the University of Toronto. Full-text pdf of the first...
Having now digested the Hamdan decision further, I wanted to offer a few initial thoughts about its significance. These are just initial impressions, so I am open to correction (and please tell me where you think I need correction). My focus is slightly different than others, and will address how the Bush Administration and Congress must respond to...
Along with Julian, I’m coming around to the position that this is a very big deal, and that it’s likely to have important consequences, short and long-term. But those consequences won’t necessarily happen as a matter of course. The Administration will resist, and in some contexts it may be able to do so successfully. 1) I see now how...
For those who haven't had enough of reading my thoughts on Hamdan, I have a short contribution to an online symposium hosted by National Review Online on the Hamdan decision. In it, I focus on the Hamdan court's refusal to defer to the President's interpretation of treaties and customary international law. ...
Marty Lederman, the tireless blogger-critic of the Administration's detention and interrogation policies, argues that because the Supreme Court has held that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions applies to the war with al-Qaeda, "[p]er today's decision, the Administration appears to have been engaged in war crimes, which are subject to the death penalty." (He further notes that such...
I'm still working my way through the Hamdan decision, but let me weigh in here with a couple of initial thoughts:* (1) As Professors Peter Spiro and Paul Stephan both suggest below, the Court did not hold that the Geneva Conventions are judicially enforceable by a private lawsuit absent separate Congressional action (Marty Lederman thinks differently, see his discussion here). The...
