In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Comparative Health Care — And the Myth of American Exceptionalism

27 Aug

As an American who has lived and received health care in two other industrialized Western countries (New Zealand and Australia), I know first-hand how pathetic American health care really is compared to its foreign counterparts.  Unfortunately, because most Americans know very little about how the rest of the industrialized world provides (vastly superior and much cheaper) health care, conservatives have...

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27 Aug

My friend and former colleague at Auckland, Mohsen Al Attar, has posted two new articles about TWAIL on SSRN.  The first, co-written with Rosalie Moore, is entitled "TWAIL Revisited - The Bolivarian Reconstruction of International Law."  The second, co-written with Vernon Ivan Tava, is entitled "TWAIL Pedagogy - Legal Education for Emancipation." The abstracts are after the jump.  I highly recommend...

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26 Aug

One of my favorite ICL scholars, Guenael Mettraux, recommends precisely that in a recent New York Times op-ed.  Here is the core of his pitch: The Guantánamo detainees pose a similar conundrum today. Trying these men stateside would necessarily require the compromise of long-cherished principles of American law. Yet continuing to hold them without the prospect of a fair trial or...

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26 Aug

I am a big fan of Laura Rozen's work over at The Cable blog on foreignpolicy.com.  She posted a piece late Monday, "Getting to Yes on Middle East Peace Talks," which offers a brief but fascinating peek into the art and science of mediating protracted conflicts -- a topic I have written about here and here....

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24 Aug

So says the headline of a WSJ news article today (Monday, August 24, 2009, B1, by August Cole), noting that unmanned aircraft - drones such as the Predator to us civilians, although the Pentagon seems to prefer UMV - are transforming not just the military, strategic as well as tactical considerations, but defense contracting.  (PopSci ran a story a little...

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23 Aug

Ruth Wedgwood comments at Forbes magazine website on the "compassionate" release of Al-Megrahi from prison in Scotland.  I agree overall with Ruth: Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, is now a free man. He was convicted in the specially created Hague trial court by a panel of Scottish judges, and his appeal was rejected by the Scottish appellate chamber. He remained in prison...

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21 Aug

[caption id="attachment_9512" align="alignright" width="137" caption=""][/caption] The battlefield robots we have mostly discussed here at Opinio Juris are those that are about remote control - realtime control by a human operator who is not actually in the cockpit of the Predator, for example.  We've talked somewhat about autonomy issues and robots - battlefield robots with programming enabling them to be able to...

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20 Aug

I want to offer a few thoughts on Dean Edley's email, which I appreciate Deb posting.  I am much less impressed by his reasoning than Deb appears to be.  (And please, Deb, correct me if I am wrong about that.) At the outset, it is important to note that I think Dean Edley's conclusion -- that Yoo cannot be fired, at...

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20 Aug

Cross-Posted at Balkinization Following my testimony last month to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security on military commissions and the like, Senator Kyl (R-AZ) was kind enough to send along some follow-up questions to answer. His first follow-up question was one of the same as one he’d posed in the hearing itself: What if any empirical...

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19 Aug

Yesterday, the Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission awarded final damage awards for the fifteen partial and final awards on liability it rendered between July 1, 2003 and December 19, 2005. You can access the damages decisions for Eritrea here, and those for Ethiopia here.  According to the AP, both sides will accept the awards, but neither is apparently thrilled with...

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14 Aug

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative frequently does impressive work; witness the U.S. WTO victory this week over China.   But when it comes to openness and transparency, USTR's efforts do not have the same shine; this is an agency notorious for its resistance to traditional inter-agency procedures (e.g., the C-175 procedure), let alone opening up its work to the public eye.   So, I...

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13 Aug

The WSJ has a very important (and certain to be much debated) story today on the front page, "A Global Surge in Tiny Loans Spurs Credit Bubble in a Slum," WSJ, A1, Thursday August 13, 2009. Also see the follow on stories, "Group borrowing leads to pressure," which is about the problem that when you use 'peer pressure' rather than...

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