In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Reponse by Professor Matthew Waxman, “International Standards for Detaining Terrorism Suspects: Moving Beyond the Armed Conflict-Criminal Divide.”

24 Nov

I thank YJIL and Opinio Juris for the opportunity to comment on Monica Hakimi’s article, “International Standards for Detaining Terrorism Suspects: Moving Beyond the Armed Conflict-Criminal Divide.” Monica’s important paper will contribute to a raging debate likely to grow more intense as President-elect Obama moves to shut down Guantanamo and put U.S. detention policy on sounder legal footing. ...

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24 Nov

Thanks to Opinio Juris for hosting this symposium. I read the blog regularly so know to expect a lively and interesting discussion.   My article addresses the international legal rules for detaining “non-battlefield terrorism suspects”—i.e., suspected terrorists not captured on a conventional battlefield or in the theater of combat. Despite the extensive literature on the rules that govern the “war on terror,”...

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23 Nov

The Yale Journal of International Law (YJIL), one of the world’s leading journals of international and comparative law, is pleased to continue its partnership with Opinio Juris in this second online symposium.  This week, we will be featuring two Articles published by YJIL in Vol. 33-2, both of which are available here.  Thank you to Peggy McGuinness and the other...

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21 Nov

The Institute for War & Peace Reporting has an interesting report today on the Ugandan government's efforts to prosecute Kony and other LRA members in a special domestic court.  According to the IWPR's report, the problem is not the lack of political will, but the potential retroactivity of the legislation necessary to make the Rome Statute's core crimes -- war...

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21 Nov

Anyone who still doubts that the ICC's pursuit of Bashir is unnerving the Sudanese government should take a gander at this article: An interview with published by Sudan official news agency (SUNA) with British Foreign Secretary David Miliband yesterday is fabricated, according to a statement by the British embassy in Khartoum. “The statements that SUNA news agency attributed to the Foreign Secretary...

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20 Nov

My friend and colleague Daniel Bradlow, professor of law and director of the international legal studies program at Washington College of Law, as well as SARCHI professor of development law and African economic relations at the University of Pretoria, has a new short opinion essay on how Africa should respond to the global financial crisis and the deliberations of the...

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20 Nov

As was widely reported, the United States and Iraqi negotiators (finally!) concluded negotiations last week by signing the text of a U.S.-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA).  Both sides now need to go through their respective domestic approval processes before exchanging the necessary notifications to bring the SOFA into force.  In Iraq, that process includes parliamentary approval, which is not a slam dunk if...

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20 Nov

What will it take to engage in a constructive debate about the power and limits of international law in international affairs? One answer is a book like Mary Ellen O’Connell’s, which makes a compelling case that not only scholars but laypersons and decision makers should think deeply before they disparage the international legal system in its entirety. Mary Ellen’s book...

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19 Nov

Within the context of our roles as part of a research group at Princeton’s Center for Theological Inquiry, Mary Ellen and I have had many wonderful conversations about natural law as a source for international law. My sense is we both share the view that natural law could be such a source, and we have discussed various instances...

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19 Nov

Salon.com has an article today about the Obama administration and torture that floats the horrifying possibility -- all too real, I'm sure -- that Bush will issue a blanket pardon for "anyone who participated in, had knowledge of, or received information about Bush's interrogation program during the so-called war on terror."  I'm not going to waste precious pixels responding to...

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18 Nov

The AP is reporting that the Trial Chamber lifted the stay "after the prosecution agreed to let judges review confidential material it received from the United Nations."  No additional information is available yet; it will be interesting to see what the Chamber does about the documents that are still protected by confidentiality agreements -- an issue I discussed here. UPDATE: According...

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17 Nov

In response to Will Fettes’s thoughtful comment: The problem is not with positivism per se but positivism alone. By the 1960s, certainly in the United States there was a view that only positive law theory explained law and positive theory relied on the existence of the usual legal institutions—with their absence on the international plane, positivists could not understand how...

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