Technology marches on, and here we have a demonstration video, on YouTube and Wired's Dangerroom, showing how a flying beetle can be implanted with miniaturized neural electrodes that allow the human operator to stimulate muscles that cause it to fly to the right or left. The applications to the battlefield, counterterrorism, etc., are obvious. (Thanks to National Journal's Shane Harris...
I opened the latest SSRN Public International Law listings this morning and noted with pleasure Peggy's response to Professor Michael Stokes Paulsen's recent article on constitutional interpretation and international law. Peggy's reply is in the Yale Law Journal online edition. As always Peggy makes fresh and lively arguments, and although I incline to Professor Paulsen's views on this, I think...
Over at Foreign Policy magazine's blog, Eric Posner has a brief, breezy column on differences, or not, between the Bush and Obama administrations on international law. Fun, quick read, whether one agrees or not. And events of the moment - the opening of the UN General Assembly, the UN confabs on things like climate change, the G-20 meetings, etc. -...
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner calls in the Financial Times for a tax on global financial transactions as a means of funding the currently moribund UN Millennium Development Goals. It is an idea that has been floated repeatedly since the 1990s - sometimes with the emphasis on the tax itself as a means of deliberately slowing down and making more...
In case you were curious about the text of the letter sent by former directors of the CIA to President Obama urging him to reverse the AG's decision to appoint a prosecutor to investigate various CIA activities under the Bush administration, RCP has posted a pdf of the text. It is short and, unsurprisingly, rests on the names of the...
The Crimes of War site has noted that Florence Hartmann has been convicted in the ICTY: The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia this week convicted a former official of contempt of court for disclosing the contents and effect of two confidential Appeals Chamber decisions. The Court found that Florence Hartmann, a French journalist and former spokesperson for the Prosecutor,...
(Update: See KJH's post above, particularly pointing out that the prosecutor has not formally opened an investigation, but is only "collecting information." Likewise Kevin's point that a couple of the laws of war possible violations I mention are not actually crimes under the ICC statute. Thanks, Kevin.) The Wall Street Journal reports today that the prosecutor's office of the International Criminal...
Orin Kerr has an interesting post at Volokh noting a story reporting that NSA intercepts were used in the just announced conviction in the UK of terrorists in the liquid-mixing-chemicals case. Orin is right in saying the story deserves more notice than it will probably get. I found it particularly interesting that apparently a reason why the NSA finally signed...
[caption id="attachment_9642" align="alignright" width="137" caption=""][/caption] So what resulted from the past few days of G-20 meetings of finance ministers? And, particularly given the long-term conversation here at OJ about transnational networks and global governance, do the meetings offer any data point in that discussion? The principal policy debates at the G-20 meetings were over bonus/compensation issues for bankers (pressed hard by the...
It's not unusual, I gather (never having worked in government), for the CIA to ask DOJ prosecutors to investigate leaks involving the agency. However, in the circumstances surrounding the current AG Holder decision to appoint a prosecutor to investigate CIA activities, it's perhaps worth noting that the CIA has asked for an investigation into what it apparently regards as a...
Over at Volokh, Michael Scharf and Jonathan Adler each weigh in. Plus, see the comments to the various posts here at OJ, as well as Peggy's earlier post on this subject at Prawfslawsblog. And Julian's earlier Prawfslawblog post, too. (Most of the discussion, though not all, is more narrowly focused on the question of 1L international law courses.)...
The Perils of Global Legalism (University of Chicago 2009) is just out, I see, and my copy just arrived via the magic of Amazon one-click. I read an early ms. draft, but am looking forward to reading the final version. This is yet another book from Eric that promises to provoke lots of people in the international law community, but...
