It seems like everyone wants the UN to change, to evolve, to reform. The trick is getting consensus on what such reform should look like. World leaders will have their chance this week to hammer something out at the plenary meeting of heads of state marking the 60thanniversary of the UN. (See also the State Department site on...
The Volcker Committee has delivered its report on the oil-for-food scandal at the UN. See also the BBC report about it here.Although it finds no direct wrongdoing by Kofi Annan, the Commission puts at his feet the responsibility for the Oil-for-Food Program being inadequately managed and going awry. We’ve already written much on the various allegations and preliminary findings....
To the surprise of none and the concern of many, a recent report finds that Asia has overtaken the Middle East as the developing world’s leading market for arms. China, India, Taiwan, Pakistan, and South Korea are among the developing world’s top ten arms importers. And, while China has been the developing world’s top importer from 2001 and into 2004,...
Peggy, Julian, and I want to thank Tony for his guest blogging with us for the past couple of weeks. The discussion he spurred was lively, to say the least, and we look forward to his continuing to comment on the discussions on this blog and then returning as guest blogger in the not-to-distant future.As for the usual suspects,...
I just wanted to check in with everyone from the Opinio Juris Central Command Bunker hidden deep in the hills of… well, it doesn’t really matter where we are. Peggy, Julian and I will start showing up a bit more as we are in the process of finishing up articles and/or traveling.I wanted to post this general comment, though, on...
[Note: here is Tony D'Amato's latest post. I am posting it for him because we seem to be having a software glitch. I have isolated the problem to the hyperlinks so I have removed the links from this post so that the full text may appear. Once the problem is fixed, we will put the links back in. ~ Chris]The...
We are very fortunate (and a little daunted) to have Professor Anthony D’Amato of Northwestern University School of Law guest blogging with us for the next two weeks. For most of our readers, Tony won’t need any introduction. Besides his extensive list of publications (over 20 books and 110 articles) on international criminal law, human rights, foreign relations law...
President Bush has appointed John Bolton in a recess appointment. CNN's story is here. The BBC has a report here.While President Bush has gotten his way with the Bolton nomination, despite not being able to muster the 60 votes needed to break the filibuster, this is likely to be a Pyrrhic victory at best. With the looming free-for-all this fall...
My St. John's colleague Brian Tamanaha has an interesting post at Balikinization about the World Tribunal on Iraq and "legal niceties."...
There are increasing reports about rising anti-Americanism in the Central Asian Republics and pressure by these republics for the U.S. to have an exit timetable for the troops stationed there. Contrast this with the argument of some strategists that the U.S. needs to establish a long term presence in these republics to (a) prevent terrorist training camps from taking root...
Justice O’Connor’s views on international law and foreign law are moderate, well-reasoned, and consistent. Julian points out two quotes and implies that, somehow, they don’t fit together in a "[]satisfying" world view. I disagree. On topics of international law, Justice O’Connor has consistently held that U.S. judges should, in certain instances, give persuasive authority to international tribunals....
In my original post I stated that, legally speaking, the embassy hostages issue was pretty much a closed case, and that a suit is unlikely to be successful against the President-elect of Iran. Julian put some meat on the bones of this statement in his post concerning the Algiers Accords and statutes of limitation. Upon more reflection, I think we...
