Bravo to everyone who's spent the past months and years pressing the Bush Administration Justice Department to release more of its legal opinions supporting "war on terror" policies. Looks like all that work (by more folks than I can reasonably name in this space) finally paid off. This morning one can find in the "What's New" section of the...
Philippe Sands gave an extensive interview on NPR's Fresh Air yesterday. Sands is already on record with his view that torture has occurred as a part of U.S. detention policy at GTMO and that high level officials are responsible for these acts. Although I'm not sure he had much new to say, his careful and eloquent arguments make for easy listening. ...
A single, bad-weather week in January seems to bring more actual news than blog commentary about it. Among under-blogged tidbits this week: • A federal court in Washington heard the first post-Boumediene case about whether constitutional rights extend to U.S. military-held detainees in Afghanistan; • Senator Feinstein (no kidding) introduced a bill that would not only mandate the closure of Guantanamo, but...
I met my client yesterday for the first time. For obvious reasons, I cannot recount the substance of what he, I, and his legal associate, Peter Robinson, discussed. But I thought readers might be interested in my impressions of the visit and my sense of Dr. Karadzic, which bears little resemblance to the image portrayed in the media. First,...
Are we seeing a new media template? There looks to be a trend of established, well-respected (but in some cases, relatively low circulation) print journals teaming up with bloggers to create online content that joins timely reportage and commentary with traditional longer essays and reported articles. Even the New Yorker (the New Yorker!) has added blogs to its site. (Steve...
I’m here at the AALS annual meeting enjoying the beautiful surroundings of San Diego. The Malibu winters are brutal and therefore the chance to flee one part of glorious southern California for another part of glorious southern California is most welcome. But I must admit I am completely agnostic about attending the AALS. I scan the program for...
The New York Times has a thoughtful piece by Adam Liptak this weekend on the Obama Administration’s difficult choice in its forthcoming brief in the Supreme Court case of al-Marri v. Pucciarelli. Essentially, the Obama Administration will have to choose between continued detention, deportation to a third country, or prosecution. Each choice is perilous. If...
John Pike, of GlobalSecurity.org website, has a provocative op-ed in today's Washington Post (January 4, 2009, B3) arguing that the evolution of battlefield robots might mean robots as the soldiers that do the killing on future battlefields: Within a decade, the Army will field armed robots with intellects that possess, as H.G. Wells put it, "minds that are to our minds...
According to the ever-reliable Sudan Vision Daily, the Pre-Trial Chamber has already decided to issue the arrest warrant for Bashir: The entire Sudanese people will not be surprised if the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against the Sudanese President Omer Al-Bashir because the decision of the ICC judges was circulated by the UN chief Ban KI-moon, the US State...
Comments like this one, made not by some obscure commenter but by David Bernstein, a law professor at George Mason and a member of The Volokh Conspiracy, in response to my Dershowitz post below: Herein the phoniness of international law. Humble Law Student has raised several significant questions with Heller’s analysis, including whether it matters under international law, as it surely...
Nan Hunter has posted on her blog the transcript of a phone conversation from April 23, 1971, between Henry Kissinger and the poet Allen Ginsberg. Ginsberg was trying to set-up a dialogue among Kissinger (and other Nixon officials) and peace activists. He was concerned that Kissinger might not know how to end the Vietnam War and he said he had some suggestions. (Unfortunately, they're not in the...
OK, I know the blogosphere has chewed over this article from the Wall Street Journal, and spit it out already, but I still can't resist posting this WSJ graphic describing a Russian professor's prediction about the end of the Union sometime in the middle of Obama's first term (in which case he would be the reverse-Lincoln). I can see...
