David Bernstein links today to an article in The Times -- a right-wing British newspaper published by Rupert Murdoch -- attacking Human Rights Watch. The article is breathlessly entitled "Nazi Scandal Engulfs Human Rights Watch," which I have to admit piqued my curiousity -- until I realized that the "Nazi scandal" concerned Marc Gelasco, a research analyst who resigned from...
The full text of U.S. State Department Legal Adviser Harold Koh's speech at ASIL can be found here. Ken has already praised it, Kevin (along with Marko Milanovic) have rejected it, and others are staying neutral or reserving judgment. Here is what I took away from the speech: The Obama Administration has now embraced the Bush Administration's position that the U.S....
I've long thought that any scholar who wants to maintain his or her credibility should stay far away from the US government, no matter which party is in power. Harold Koh is a case in point. Others have highlighted his problematic testimony about targeted killing, which continued to maintain the Bush administration's fictions --...
Every time that I teach international criminal law, at least one student writes on whether you could prosecute the Burmese junta for crimes against humanity. As a matter of substantive ICL, the answer is clearly yes. The problem is jurisdictional -- who is going to prosecute them? Apparently, the UK thinks it should be the ICC via a Security Council...
I love Glenn Greenwald. He catches Obama in a remarkable -- and shameless -- act of hypocrisy. Obama on why America can't investigate the systematic human-rights abuses that were ordered at the highest levels of its government: I'm a strong believer that it's important to look forward and not backwards. And Obama on why Indonesia must investigate the systematic human-rights abuses...
The Eleventh Circuit in United States v. Frank has ruled that a child sex trafficking statute applies extraterritorially. The statute, 18 U.S.C. § 2251A, provides that: “[w]hoever purchases ...
In case you haven't seen it, make sure to check out Jane Mayer's demolition of Marc Thiessen's book-length apologia for torture, "Courting Disaster." As her review demonstrates, it's much easier to defend torture when you distort nearly everything. UPDATE: This, I think, is the money quote: The publication of “Courting Disaster” suggests that Obama’s avowed determination “to look forward, not...
Today's Financial Times has a story on how unhappy U.S. businesses have become about Chinese government restrictions interfering with their access to Chinese markets. So, one can understand how U.S. exporters would welcome news that the United States and China are getting closer to including a Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT). And, let's be clear, this would be the mother-of-all BITs, given...
Bangladesh has ratified the Rome Statute, making it the 111th member of the International Criminal Court. Bangladesh was the first country in South Asia to sign the Statute, which it did on July 17, 1998. I don't know what explains the 12-year gap between signature and ratification; if any readers know, please chime in below. Bangladesh's ratification will have immediate dividends. ...
My book review of the Oxford Companion, edited by Antonio Cassese and many others, has just been published in the new issue of the American Journal of International Law. It's a decent-sized review, almost 5,000 words, as befits a book that checks in at more than 1200 pages. I argue that the book is a magisterial achievement, one of the...
You just can't make this stuff up: Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has taken a harsh position against undocumented Armenian workers in Turkey, threatening to expel thousands amid tensions over allegations that Armenians were victims of “genocide” during the last days of the Ottoman Empire. Resolutions passed recently in the United States and Sweden to brand the World...
