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...
Just another day in America's own gulag: A special Obama administration task force review found in 2009 that Latif, who had been held at Gitmo since early 2002 and had waged a long legal battle for his freedom, could be released, a conclusion that could only be reached by a unanimous vote of all U.S. intelligence agencies. That finding was buttressed a...
Mark Kersten has the scoop at Justice in Conflict: So why, then, did Mauritania do it or, perhaps more accurately, how did Libya convince Mauritania to change its tune? Having reached out to various contacts to see whether anyone knew what had changed Mauritania’s mind, a number of individuals quickly responded that there was only one possible motivation: money. While certainly not...
Just when you thought you've seen everything -- you haven't: According to a statement posted on the website of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, Judge El Hadji Malik Sow, a Senegalese jurist who served as alternate judge for Trial Chamber II, has agreed to testify in the wake of the defense appeal. A guilty verdict was handed down against Taylor last...
