In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Is it Time to Facilitate Cyberwar?

28 Jun

The New York Times (along with much of the mainstream media) has "rediscovered" cyberwar of late (see here, here, here, and here).  Today's story revives longstanding differences between Russian government proposals to regulate cyberwarfare by treaty versus existing U.S. preferences to place the issue in more informal law enforcement cooperation networks: Russia favors an international treaty along the lines of those negotiated for...

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28 Jun

Moises Naim of Foreign Policy has an essay in the new issue called "Minilateralism: The magic number to get real international action." His piece has spawned reactions from the bloggers at FP.com. Naim's essay is the latest volley in a debate on "big" or "small" multilateral action should be; however, although he and other bloggers do a good job setting out the...

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27 Jun

A quick update on the OTP's efforts to include genocide charges in Bashir's arrest warrant.  Pre-Trial Chamber I has now granted leave to appeal the issue I've discussed before -- whether it misunderstood Article 58's "reasonable grounds" requirement when it rejected the genocide charges. It's a very defensive decision, almost certainly written by Judge Steiner, who is the only holdover from...

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26 Jun

It seems likely that Spain is about drastically curtail its universal jurisdiction law--the law that had been used by Magistrate Baltasar Garzon to go after Augusto Pinochet--such that it really won't be universal jurisdiction at all.  While some (many?) of my international law colleagues may view this as a step backwards, I welcome this adjustment as a prudent move that will foster...

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24 Jun

Foreign Policy.com reports: "Cloture passed on a 65-31 vote," a Congressional source relays at 11:30am. "There was applause in the Senate gallery after the vote was announced. Republicans are threatening to exercise their right to use all 30 hours of floor debate before permitting a final vote, so Koh may not be formally confirmed until tomorrow." See also IntLawGrrls.  Yesterday, by the...

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23 Jun

[ Laura Dickinson is the Foundation Professor of Law, Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State University.] After three months of unwarranted delay, the cloture vote on State Department Legal Adviser nominee Dean Harold Hongju Koh is finally scheduled for tomorrow. (See Chris Borgen's post, here.) Predictably, critics on the right are gearing up with robocalls and email campaigns aimed at...

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21 Jun

Saree Makdisi, a professor of comparative literature at UCLA and an old friend from the literature program at Duke, has a superb editorial in today's Los Angeles Times about the media's -- and thus our -- use of language concerning Israel and Palestine.  Here's a taste: In the U.S., discussion of Palestinian politicians and political movements often relies on a spectrum...

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21 Jun

With the number of the exonerated now at 240, giving prisoners the right to prove their innocence through DNA testing would risk “unnecessarily overthrowing the established system of criminal justice.” It might lead to a reasonably accurate one....

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19 Jun

As most people probably know by now, the Washington Post, completely overburdened by liberals like Charles Krauthammer, Bill Kristol, George Will, Jim Hoagland, Michael Gerson, Robert Kagan, Fred Hiatt, David Broder, Richard Cohen, John Bolton, Joe Lieberman, and Douglas Feith, has fired Dan Froomkin, author of the wonderful blog White House Watch.  Froomkin has yet to say anything about his firing, other than that...

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