The American Society of International Law recently awarded its annual certificates and prizes for scholarship in international law. A number of the winners have either been involved in OJ symposia or are friends of the blog, so I want to acknowledge their achievements here: Certificate of Merit in a specialized area of international law: Mark Osiel, "The End of Reciprocity: Terror,...
So, it turns out that the US military was lying through its teeth when it claimed that the three Afghan women murdered during a "bungled" Special Operations attack in Afghanistan six weeks ago were not killed by NATO -- read: American -- forces: NATO military officials had already admitted killing two innocent civilians — a district prosecutor and local police...
I love Foreign Policy's blog, Passport. Along with Democracy Arsenal, it's one of the two best blogs for analysis of (duh) US foreign policy. Which is why I was shocked to read a recent post by Andrew Swift entitled "Is Karl Rove a War Criminal?", because Swift's analysis would make a first-year law student blush in embarrassment. Here is how...
There is an old adage that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged. The rejoinder is that a liberal is a conservative who has been indicted. Speaking of which, an intriguing development in the case of the Christian terrorists: All members of the anti-government Hutaree group, who wanted to start a violent revolution against the government...
NGO Monitor loves to criticize progressive NGOs for a lack of transparency concerning their funding. A recent report, for example, predictably attacks Human Rights Watch for not identifying all of its donors, particularly those at last year's fundraising event in Saudi Arabia: HRW publishes the names and amounts provided by some of its donors, but others remain hidden. Although HRW...
Forgive the self-promotion, but I was just sent the cover of my co-edited book (with Markus Dubber, who teaches at Toronto), and I think it's really cool. The Handbook, which will be published in November by Stanford University Press, is the first edited book on comparative substantive criminal law. It contains seventeen chapters -- 16 chapters on the...
AP reports that a Dutch court of appeals has affirmed a lower court ruling that held the UN could not be sued for its failure to protect Bosnian civilians in Srebrenica: Appeals judges have ruled that relatives of victims of Europe's worst massacre since World War II cannot sue the United Nations for compensation in a Dutch court. Lawyers for...
David Bernstein links today to an article in The Times -- a right-wing British newspaper published by Rupert Murdoch -- attacking Human Rights Watch. The article is breathlessly entitled "Nazi Scandal Engulfs Human Rights Watch," which I have to admit piqued my curiousity -- until I realized that the "Nazi scandal" concerned Marc Gelasco, a research analyst who resigned from...
I've long thought that any scholar who wants to maintain his or her credibility should stay far away from the US government, no matter which party is in power. Harold Koh is a case in point. Others have highlighted his problematic testimony about targeted killing, which continued to maintain the Bush administration's fictions --...
Every time that I teach international criminal law, at least one student writes on whether you could prosecute the Burmese junta for crimes against humanity. As a matter of substantive ICL, the answer is clearly yes. The problem is jurisdictional -- who is going to prosecute them? Apparently, the UK thinks it should be the ICC via a Security Council...
I love Glenn Greenwald. He catches Obama in a remarkable -- and shameless -- act of hypocrisy. Obama on why America can't investigate the systematic human-rights abuses that were ordered at the highest levels of its government: I'm a strong believer that it's important to look forward and not backwards. And Obama on why Indonesia must investigate the systematic human-rights abuses...
I'm not much of an Obama fan -- though I think the health care bill is a step in the right direction -- but at least I'm not certifiably insane. From a recent non-partisan Harris poll: 67 percent of Republicans (and 40 percent of Americans overall) believe that Obama is a socialist. 57 percent of Republicans (32 percent overall) believe...
