This is a fascinating story: the State Department, the Iranian government, and the NBA have joined forces to arrange for the Iranian men's basketball team to train and play next week against NBA teams in Salt Lake City: Iran will take part in the Rocky Mountain Revue, the Utah-hosted summer league and will play four games. The team will also observe...
Okay, I really, really hate the Wallabies. But not this much: The United States planned to gas Australian troops in experiments with two of the most lethal nerve gases ever devised, newly declassified files have revealed. Previously top secret documents have shown that even as the world was outlawing chemical weapons at the height of the Cold War, Washington sought Canberra's permission...
The Sudanese government is not very happy with the Prosecutor's decision to indict Bashir. Indeed, Sudan's ambassador to the UN has said that the government intends to ask the Security Council to block the prosecution, describing any attempt to arrest Bashir as "an act of war." Such belligerent rhetoric is expected from such a belligerent regime. Many opponents of the Sudanese...
I have been going back-and-forth with myself about the wisdom of indicting Bashir for genocide. I continue to believe that the move is a risky one in the short term, given the likelihood that the Sudanese government will respond to the indictment with violence against the peacekeepers and the humanitarian workers in the country. Nevertheless, I find the following defense...
I am grateful to be associated with this blog in so many ways: personally, because of my wonderful co-bloggers and our many invited guests; intellectually, because the blog allows me to try out new ideas and forces me to keep up with what is happening in the world; and -- yes -- professionally, because the blog exposes my ideas, often...
I mentioned last month that the ICC Prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, was considering bringing genocide charges against Sudanese officials far more senior than Ahmed Haroun, the country's "humanitarian affairs" minister. Well, he's now decided to do exactly that — and his target is no other than Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the President of Sudan himself:The chief prosecutor of the Internationals Criminal...
Every week, an Australian show called The Gruen Transfer asks two advertising companies to compete with each other to sell the unsellable. This week's challenge: create a TV ad to whip up support in Oz for a military invasion of New Zealand. One of the ads is okay — but this one had me laughing so hard there...
Shameless plug alert: I have posted a new essay on SSRN, "The Cognitive Psychology of Mens Rea." It's a sequel of sorts to my essay "The Cognitive Psychology of Circumstantial Evidence," which appeared last year in the Michigan Law Review. Here is the abstract:"Actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea" -- the act does not make a...
Man, what kind of sweatshop is the University of Chicago?From 1992 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Barack Obama served as a professor in the Law School. He was a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996. He was a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004, during which time he taught three courses per year. Senior Lecturers are considered...
I notice it every time I'm in the States — Americans seem really, really fat. And so they are: according to recent Calorie Lab statistics, more than 50% of the people in every state in the Union are either clinically obese (BMI 30%+) or clinically overweight (BMI 25%+). Mississippians are the fattest, more than 66% of the population,...
According to the ICC President and Prosecutor, Lubanga's trial can now continue, because the UN has agreed to turn over the disputed evidence to the Trial Chamber and the defense:"The obstacles have been lifted," chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told journalists on the sidelines of a ceremony in The Hague to mark the 10th anniversary of the Rome Treaty that led...
As I anticipated a few days ago following the UN's refusal to provide the judges with meaningful access to the disputed evidence, Trial Chamber I has ordered Thomas Lubanga Dyilo's unconditional and immediate release:30. As just set out, the Chamber's Decision stayed the proceedings sine die because of the present impossibility of trying the accused fairly. It follows that the...
