David Luban and Stuart Taylor are having an interesting exchange at Balkinization over whether the CIA's use of waterboarding qualifies as torture under the federal torture statute, 18 USC 2340. Luban accuses Taylor of embracing "the fundamental trick used by the torture lawyers: pretending that the legal definition of 'torture' is something technical rather than 'colloquial'," when...
[caption id="attachment_10102" align="alignright" width="101" caption=" "][/caption] This coming Monday and Tuesday, Opinio Juris will be hosting its fourth online symposium in partnership with the Yale Journal of International Law. Each day, we will be hosting a series of posts revolving around Articles published in YJIL’s most recent Vol. 34-2, which is available for download here. On Monday, Michael J. Glennon of the Fletcher School...
I've heard that the docket for the European Court of Human Rights is out of control, but a backlog of 120,000* cases is a little ridiculous. There is no doubt about the seriousness of the situation in Strasbourg. Jean-Paul Costa, president of the European Court of Human Rights, has referred to it as extremely disturbing. The parliamentary assembly of the Council of...
The following is a guest-post -- actually a short book-proposal -- by my friend Mark Osiel, the Aliber Family Chair in Law at the University of Iowa. I have agreed to post it despite the inordinate jealousy I feel toward his remarkable productivity. Mark would greatly appreciate comments and criticisms, especially examples and counter-examples of what he is trying to...
That's the question, sort of, raised in Totes-Isotoner v. United States, the most interesting tariff classification case you will ever read. Under the Harmonized Tariff Schedule, men's glove have a tariff rate of 14 percent whereas gloves "for other persons" have a rate of 12.6 percent. An importer of gloves, Totes-Isotoner, argues that these duties unconstitutionally discriminate on...
Sure, it's in Roman Polanski's new film, The Ghost Writer. But it's still cool -- especially when the Prime Minister, played by an excellent Pierce Brosnan, is charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity for aiding and abetting torture by the United States! I have to admit, I never thought I'd live to see Article 25(3)(c) of the Rome Statute...
I am sitting in the Indianapolis airport as I write this, heading home from a conference on the Milosevic trial. The conference was easily the most enjoyable I've ever attended -- I vastly prefer small, specialized conferences to mega-events like the AALS or ASIL. The attendees were a superb mix of academics, former OTP investigators and analysts, and defence attorneys. ...
Over at Discover.com, Brian Lamb reports on a lecture by Brother Guy Consolmagno, SJ, an American Jesuit who is a research astronomer for the Vatican Observatory (and has archived blog posts here). On the issue of asteroid mining (which we tangentially touched upon in this discussion on legal issues related to mining the Moon), Lamb describes the opening of Brother Consolmagno's argument: Can...
The release of the final report on the Yoo/Bybee "torture memos" reminds us of how government lawyering can intersect with the interpretation of international law. And so just in time, the Yale Journal of International Law will be hosting a conference next Friday, February 26, on "Government Lawyering and International Law." Harold Koh, John Bellinger, and lots of other less...
I don't have much time, but it's important to note that although David Margolis may be a career attorney, he has made a career out of preventing government officials from being held accountable for their misconduct. From Scott Horton: But “Yoda” Margolis also knows the “dark side” of political intrigue. He was long the man to whom political appointees could...
After five years, the U.S. Department of Justice has finally released its report of its internal investigation into the legal advice provided by its attorneys that became known as the "Torture Memos." The lead investigator was the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) which issued a report recommending referring John Yoo and Jay Bybee to their state bars for disciplinary proceedings....
I had almost forgotten about this ongoing dispute between Australia and Japan over whaling, which has been going on for years (and which I first noted on this blog way back in 2005). The Australian Prime Minister warned Japan yesterday that if whaling doesn't stop by November, Australia will take Japan to court, either the ICJ or the International Tribunal...
