I just wanted to remind everyone that next week we will host a discussion of Benjamin Wittes' book Law And the Long War. Besides Ben, Bobby Chesney (Wake Forest), Geoff Corn (South Texas), Glenn Sulmasy (U.S. Coast Guard Academy), Steve Vladeck (American University), Marty Lederman (Georgetown) and possibly one or two others will be joining us for the book symposium. ...
We are very happy to announce that, as of Monday, Deborah Pearlstein of Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs will be joining Opinio Juris as our newest (OK, only by two weeks) member. A scholar and practitioner in national security law, Deborah served from 2003 to 2007 as the founding director of the Law and Security Program at Human Rights...
I was struck by this piece tucked away in today's Washington Post, noting that Pat Kennedy, Under Secretary for Management at the State Department, had to remind diplomatic personnel in Germany that they were prohibited from attending Barack Obama's speech today in Berlin. It is a mark of just how unprecedented Obama's current overseas visit is, mixing as it does official...
I really wanted to ignore the Wall Street Journal editorial that Julian mentioned yesterday, filing it in the "life is too short" category. But I can't help myself, because the editorial is just shockingly factually inaccurate -- to say nothing of its rather curious judgment, such as the idea that Bashir "may be the only man able to guarantee...
I know we will be having a discussion of Tom Farer's book on a grand liberal strategy for dealing with terrorism down the road, but I wanted to note that the general issue of 'grand strategy' is at the heart of Philip Bobbitt's new book, Terror and Consent. It has deservedly been widely reviewed and highly praised - Ferguson in...
I'm not sure what to make of this argument by Messrs David Rivkin and Lee Casey in today's Wall Street Journal questioning the legality of the ICC Prosecutor's proposed arrest warrant for Sudan's president: The U.N. Security Council is not a judicial body, and any legitimate authority it may have to subject member states to the ICC -- or its own...
Honestly, I thought I had seen it all. I had resigned myself to the traditional media doing everything they could to avoid drawing attention to McCain's inability to keep basic facts about foreign policy straight -- Sunni vs. Shia, Czechoslovakia (four times!), Somalia vs. Sudan, the remarkable Iraq/Pakistan border. But I never expected CBS to actually edit an interview with...
Globalization's effect on basketball has been in the news quite a bit recently. I blogged last week about the Iranian national team coming to Salt Lake City to play in the NBA's Rocky Mountain Revue. On Monday, the superb FP Passport blogged about "The NBA's euro problem" -- the fact that more and more NBA players, including American ones, are...
AFP is reporting that Radovan Karadzic, the former president of Republika Srpska and the former head of the euphemistically named Serb Democratic Party, has been arrested. This is great news -- if the ICTY had a "most wanted" deck of cards, Karadzic would be the Ace of Spades: As early as July 1991, the Bosnian Serb leaders, and in particular, Radovan...
As frustration with the Bush administration's War on Transparency continues to mount, scholars and pundits are beginning to suggest that the U.S. should think about creating a South African-style Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate the administration's many crimes. Nicholas Kristof is one example. Richard Clarke is another. And a third is Katherine Tiedemann, writing in The American Strategist: The South...
The Seventh Circuit last week rendered the most unusual foreign non conveniens decision I have ever read. The case presents a cautionary tale about the impact that foreign judicial corruption can have on domestic litigation. Mañez v. Bridgestone Firestone involved a tort action against Bridgestone Firestone filed in Indiana after José Samuel Mañez-Reyes died in a "rollover" car accident in...
The New York Times has a prominent, page 3 international story datelined from the UN by C.J. Chivers, "US Position Complicates Global Effort to Curb Illicit Arms." Let me step here directly, but I hope carefully, into the international aspects of a very emotional US political debate. (And thanks to Glenn Reynolds once again for the Instalanche! I also want...
