My thanks to Marty and Steve for their fascinating and insightful posts (here and here) on the NDAA. I have many thoughts about the Act, but I want to focus here on the idea that U.S. courts can and should analogize to detention in international armed conflict in order to determine what it means for a person to have “substantially...
In case the government's actions haven't yet convinced you of the fundamental unfairness of the commissions (such as making up war crimes), perhaps its decision to treat the attorney-client privilege as optional will do the trick: The new commander of the Guantanamo Bay prison wants a team of government and law enforcement officials to be allowed to review all ...
Our friends at Cambridge University have asked me to bring the following journal to readers' attention, which has been established by James Crawford: Cambridge Journal of International & Comparative Law is a newly established double-blind peer reviewed, open-access journal which aims to publish high-end legal scholarship. It has a broad focus on international and comparative law and a particular focus on...
The OTP is seeking an arrest warrant for Abdelrahim Mohamed Hussein, the Sudanese Defence Minister, in connection with a number of attacks on civilians in Darfur between August 2003 and March 2004. The request alleges that Hussein is responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the attacks, but does not include a genocide charge. According to Bill...
Don't worry, I will not be linking to any and all reviews of my book. (Only the good ones.) I mention this review -- a review essay written by the distinguished scholar David Fraser at Nottingham (sub. req.) -- because it uses my book as a springboard to discuss a number of important historiographic issues concerning World War II scholarship...
A group of distinguished Nuremberg scholars, including myself (minus the distinguished part), have filed an amicus brief in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum on behalf of the petitioners. The brief argues that although the Nuremberg trials themselves did not involve the prosecution of juridical persons such as corporations, a wide variety of Allied actions outside of judicial fora indicate that...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=x_tmig8PxAw...
My friends at Leiden -- my alma mater -- have asked me to post the following call for papers: Call for Papers for the Jus Post Bellum Project Launch Conference The Jus Post Bellum Project at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies at Leiden University has issued a call for papers for the Project's launch conference. The conference, entitled "'Jus-Post-Bellum': Mapping the...
The Court of Appeal judgment orders the UK government to seek the release of Yunus Rahmatullah, an alleged member of Lashkar-e-Taiba who has been detained at Bagram since 2004, from U.S. custody. What is particularly interesting about the decision is that it directly -- though implicitly -- rejects a little-known memo written by Jack Goldsmith while he was at the...
Ashley Deeks, a fellow at Columbia and a former member of the Office of the Legal Adviser, has posted an essay on SSRN -- forthcoming in the Virginia Journal of International Law -- entitled "Unwilling or Unable: Toward an Normative Framework for Extra-Territorial Self-Defense." Here is the abstract: Non-state actors, including terrorist groups, regularly launch attacks against states, often...
That's the question asked by my friends at Wronging Rights, in response to a recent article in Time: TIME claims to have obtained an internal ICC memo showing that the Court is "compiling evidence of possible recent war crimes in southern Sudan, allegedly directed by Sudanese Defense Minister Abdelrahim Mohamed Hussein." Apparently, in addition to the Prosecutor's request...
It's official -- or almost is, to be completely accurate. Mark Kersten first reported the news at Justice in Conflict, and a Reuters story has now confirmed it. On December 12, Fatou Bensouda will become the next ICC Prosecutor: An informal meeting of ICC members will be held in New York on Thursday to discuss the appointment, said Liechtenstein's U.N....
