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08 Jun Lessons from the Great White North: Canada’s Supreme Court Limits Extraterritorial Application of its Charter

I just noticed this decision yesterday by the Canadian Supreme Court holding that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms generally does not apply to searches and seizures in foreign countries, even those that eventually result in evidence that is used in a trial of a Canadian citizen. I’m far from knowledgeable about Canadian law, but it does seem that this issue is very similar to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Verdugo-Urquidez to similarly limit the applicability of the U.S. search and seizure provision, the Fourth Amendment, to U.S....

09 Dec Diplomatic Pat-Downs

...are not exempt from the searches. Shankar “was screened in accordance with TSA’s security policies and procedures”, spokesman Nicholas Kimball said in Washington. A number of factors could prompt a pat-down search, including bulky clothing, but he said the agency did not generally discuss specific cases. Can we be surprised that this happened in Mississippi? The state’s lieutenant governor was quick to condemn the action: “Although I understand we need proper security measures to protect the passengers in US airports, I regret the outrageous way Indian Ambassador Shankar was treated...

26 Jul If It’s Thursday, It Must Be London (Mitt Romney Edition)

...US citizen for life without ever having set foot in the US, though I doubt that would be true of the private-jet set around the table with Mitt). Bluman v. FEC presented a very plausible challenge to the ban on campaign donations by nonimmigrants in the US (brought by two very sympathetic plaintiffs – one a lawyer, one a doctor, one Republican, one Democrat, both here on long-term work visas). That was given the back of the hand by the Judge Kavanaugh, on a well-dressed but basically ipse dixit basis....

23 Oct REVISED — Military Commissions, Round 3

...some provisions whose impact will have to be determined in practice. The Good There are certainly some improvements in this bill over the military commissions act passed by Congress in 2006, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Hamdan decision declaring unlawful the first Bush Administration commissions (pursued without congressional authorization). For instance, the new law removes previous language prohibiting anyone from “invoking” the Geneva Conventions as a “source of rights” in any U.S. court. There is instead a much narrower provision denying any unprivileged enemy belligerent a cause of...

12 Apr How to Draft a Maritime Boundary

forms of writing aimed at the general population, legal writing is aimed at a highly specialized group that uses a specialized vocabulary, containing both unusual terms and common terms imbued with technical meanings. The desire of the author to cover all contingencies overrules brevity, a problem compounded by the tendancy of legal writers to re-use tested stock verbiage rather than writing new documents from scratch. This often leads to legal documents being quite lengthy.' Therefore it is not surprising that this award reads like it does. What is more, the...

30 Aug NYT’s Kristof: Obama’s Sudan Policy is a Failure

Jordan Response... I seems a bit bizzare to claim that Bashir, who is covered by an arrest warrant in an effort before the ICC to help prevent future murder and genocide by ending impunity (as recognizably required of all parties to the ICC Statute from its preamble and articles 25 and 27-28), should be allowed to roam free in the interest of ending murder and genocide. Functional impunity will not serve peace in the long-term or the need to combat murder and genocide in the short or long term (short,...

30 Apr Guest Post: De Jure and de Facto Recognition as a Framework for Zivotofsky

“The use of the term “Palestine” is historical fiction; it encourages the Palestine entity concept; its “revived usage enrages” individual Israelis”. Crawford replied “It is difficult to see how it “enrages” Israeli opinion. The practice is consistent with the fact that, ”in a de jure sense”, Jerusalem was part of Palestine and has not since become part of any other sovereignty. That it was not a simple matter, since there was a ''quota nationality'', in regard to which U.S. legislation and regulation continue to employ the term Palestine. See Foreign...

13 Jul Sulmasy on National Security Courts

...national security court apparatus needs to be statutorily created. The detainee issue will not be resolved soon, nor will the Global War on Terror end in the foreseeable future. Policy makers must achieve both the reality and appearance of justice for the short and long term. Clearly, many issues need to be hammered out in regards to court composition. The current thrust should simply be to inject new ideas into the national debate over the proper handling of detainees. In that vein, I humbly offer fundamental guidelines for a National...

19 May Keitner Takes on Bradley/Goldsmith on Government Official Immunity

Prof. Chimene Keitner at UC-Hastings has posted a short essay in the online version of the Yale Journal of International Law criticizing the novel and influential interpretation of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act proposed by Profs. Curtis Bradley and Jack Goldsmith. In a series of articles, Bradley and Goldsmith have argued that the FSIA’s immunity for “foreign state[s]” should be interpreted to include foreign government officials. This argument may very well be adopted by the Supreme Court this term in Samantar v. Yousuf (for background, see here and for my...