The Olympic Games are an intense environment for disputes. They draw unbelievable scrutiny and international attention, with the media on site dedicated to report even the hint of a controversy. The athletes at their center are competing in the most important event of their sporting careers, with the highest possible stakes. In this charged atmosphere, the Court...
[caption id="attachment_4216" align="alignleft" width="300" caption=""][/caption]Opinio Juris is pleased to announce a panel of international sports law experts as guest bloggers during the Beijing Olympics. Throughout the Olympic Games they will discuss international sports law and provide expert commentary on any Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) arbitrations that take place. Matt Mitten, Maidie Oliveau and Antonio Rigozzi are...
Salim Hamdan has been sentenced to 66 months in prison, far short of the 30 years-to-life sentence the prosecution requested. Good news for Hamdan? Probably not, as Colonel Morris Davis -- the third chief prosecutor of the military commissions, who resigned because of political interference by the Pentagon -- pointed out in the comments to my ex post facto post: The...
The sole virtue of being the last among bloggers to weigh in on yesterday’s Hamdan verdict is having a chance to read what everyone else is saying. The New York Times, the ACLU, Human Rights First and others are pretty scathing in their criticism: don’t be fooled by the patina of fairness evinced by the split verdict, this system...
To tide readers over until Deb offers her thoughts, readers interested in some of the strengths and the weaknesses of the Hamdan verdict would do well to read Dave Glazier's post at National Security Advisors and Marty Lederman's post at Balkinization....
Durham University's International Boundaries Research Unit has made a map that illustrates the various disputes over the Arctic. The BBC reports: "Its primary purpose is to inform discussions and debates because, frankly, there has been a lot of rubbish about who can claim (sovereignty) over what," explained Martin Pratt, director of the university's International Boundaries Research Unit (IBRU). "To be honest, most...
Well, the Hamdan verdict is in: guilty on five counts of material support to a terrorist organization, but significantly for cases to come - not guilty on the far broader charge of conspiracy. The Times’ story is here. Sentencing to follow this afternoon. This is hardly the end of the story. There will certainly be appeals. But...
The State of Texas carried out its execution of Jose Ernesto Medellin late Tuesday night. It did so following the Supreme Court's denial of a stay, 5-4. The split is unsurprising, with the majority focused (accurately I suspect) on the fact that a legislative fix was unlikely, and reading DOJ's silence on the stay request as consistent with a larger...
I was hoping that the discussion last week would address not only who could be tried by a military commission, but also for what crimes someone could be tried. That issue flared up again yesterday in the Hamdan trial, when the presiding military judged refused to instruct the jury that any attempt by an "unlawful enemy combatant" -- a status...
That, in essence, is the surprising argument that the Coast Guard raised in a recent administrative law decision involving regulation of shipping traffic to protect an endangered species. In Defenders of Wildlife v. Gutierrez, the D.C. Circuit was presented with the question of whether Coast Guard action implementing "traffic separation schemes" constituted "final agency action" within the meaning of...
Before heading to Bethlehem I spent an hour in the Old City of Jerusalem drinking Turkish coffee at the entrance to the Dome of the Rock as I watched thousands of devout Muslims pour in for afternoon prayers, sajjada in hand. I then exited the Muslim quarter through the Damascus Gate and caught sherut 124 to the security checkpoint....
As I've mentioned before, I'm completing a short, popular, non-academic, policy book on US-UN relations. The genesis of the book, however, was the run-up to the UN reform summit, the General Assembly summit (and accompanying final document) of September 2005. My editors have been beyond patient in waiting for me to finish this not-very-large project. But I must say that the...
