Apologies for interrupting the book discussion, but I wanted to flag the D.C. Circuit's blockbuster opinion in Hamdan v. United States, which was issued today. The D.C. Circuit has reversed the Court of Military Commission Review and held that material support for terrorism was not a war crime when Hamdan committed the acts for which he was convicted. Here are...
From the government brief arguing that the media and witnesses in the 9/11 trial should not be permitted to hear the defendants describe being tortured by the US government: "Each of the accused is in the unique position of having had access to classified intelligence sources and methods," the prosecution says in court papers. "The government, like the defense, must protect...
At his new blog, Derek Gregory posts the following photo, which shows American soldiers applying the "water cure" during the war in the Phillippines, which lasted from 1899-1902: Of course, not everything old is new again. Five Army officers were convicted by courts-martial for using the "water cure" during the Phillippine War, with one reviewing authority unequivocally describing the interrogation method...
I'm sorry I didn't discover it until he linked to me, but Derek Gregory -- the Peter Wall Distinguished Professor and Professor of Geography at the University of British Columbia -- has recently started a blog entitled Geographical Imaginations: War, Space, and Security. Gregory is one of the great political geographers of his or any generation; I can't recommend the...
Julian beat me to Eric Posner's new Slate article on the legality of drone strikes. I don't agree with everything in it, but I think it's notable that Posner -- echoing his sometime co-author Jack Goldsmith -- rejects the idea that international law permits self-defense against a non-state actor whenever a state is "unable or unwilling" to prevent the NSA...
I'm currently writing an article for the Journal of International Criminal Justice on the legality of signature drone strikes under international humanitarian law and international human rights law. I will link to the article when it's done (two weeks or so), but I couldn't resist posting the following quotes -- the first from the New York Times, describing the Obama...
I am very sad to report that the eminent British historian has passed away at 95. He lived an amazing life, as recounted in the Guardian's lengthy obituary today. Here is a snippet: If Eric Hobsbawm had died 25 years ago, the obituaries would have described him as Britain's most distinguished Marxist historian and would have left it more or less...
Last week, while I was participating in a conference, I received an email from Google with a puzzling subject line: "Subpoena Notice from Google (Internal Ref. No. 257121)." I opened the email, assuming that it was some kind of sophisticated phishing attempt. It wasn't. It was Google informing me -- more than a little cryptically -- that Chevron had subpoenaed...
Benjamin Netanyahu is being suitably mocked for the Wily E. Coyote-like picture of a bomb he used at the UN to describe Israel's "red line" concerning Iran's purported efforts to build a nuclear weapon. There's no need for me to pile on; even right-wingers are horrified, with Jeffrey Goldberg -- Jeffrey Goldberg! -- tweeting earlier today that "Netanyahu's bomb cartoon...
Two posts today by ostensibly progressive bloggers claim that MEK has not been involved in a terrorist attack in years. Joshua Keating at FP: The idea that a group blamed for the killing of six Americans in the 1970s, as well as dozens of deadly terrorist bombings against Iranian targets afte,r that is “the largest peaceful, secular, pro-democratic Iranian dissident group”...
Just in case you are not yet convinced that the Obama administration's counterterrorism policies are actually worse than the Bush administration's: The officials said U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had made the decision to remove MEK from the list, and that it was expected to be formally announced in coming days. The State Department said that Clinton sent a classified communication...
A few weeks ago, I wrote a long post explaining the one way in which the absence of due process in a national prosecution could make a case admissible before the ICC. The post drew a distinction between two different kinds of national prosecutions: (1) one that fails to satisfy international standards of due process; and (2) one that fails...
