In case you haven't seen it, make sure to check out Jane Mayer's demolition of Marc Thiessen's book-length apologia for torture, "Courting Disaster." As her review demonstrates, it's much easier to defend torture when you distort nearly everything. UPDATE: This, I think, is the money quote: The publication of “Courting Disaster” suggests that Obama’s avowed determination “to look forward, not...
Bangladesh has ratified the Rome Statute, making it the 111th member of the International Criminal Court. Bangladesh was the first country in South Asia to sign the Statute, which it did on July 17, 1998. I don't know what explains the 12-year gap between signature and ratification; if any readers know, please chime in below. Bangladesh's ratification will have immediate dividends. ...
FADE IN: INT. KEVIN'S OFFICE -- DAY KEVIN (obscenely young, ridiculously handsome) sits at his desk, poring through archival material. An AUSSIE STUDENT (even younger, not as handsome) enters. AUSSIE: Hey, sorry to interrupt. Just wanted to say congratulations. I heard the U.S. passed universal health care. KEVIN: Thanks, but it's not actually universal. More than 20 million people still won't have health insurance. AUSSIE:...
My book review of the Oxford Companion, edited by Antonio Cassese and many others, has just been published in the new issue of the American Journal of International Law. It's a decent-sized review, almost 5,000 words, as befits a book that checks in at more than 1200 pages. I argue that the book is a magisterial achievement, one of the...
You just can't make this stuff up: Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has taken a harsh position against undocumented Armenian workers in Turkey, threatening to expel thousands amid tensions over allegations that Armenians were victims of “genocide” during the last days of the Ottoman Empire. Resolutions passed recently in the United States and Sweden to brand the World...
Our friends at the University of Amsterdam's Center for International Law have asked us to announce the European Science Foundation's upcoming conference, The Responsibility to Protect: From Principle to Practice. Here is the description of the conference, which sounds like it's well worth attending: Five years after its acceptance by the 2005 World Summit, it is time to consider the...
Our friends at the German Yearbook have asked us to post the following call for papers, and we are happy to oblige: The German Yearbook of International Law is Germany’s oldest yearbook in the field of public international law. The GYIL is published annually by the Walther Schücking Institute for International Law at the University of Kiel and contains contributions on...
I am delighted to announce that Luis Moreno-Ocampo has appointed my friend and colleague Tim McCormack to be the Office of the Prosecutor's Special Adviser on International Humanitarian Law. From the announcement: Professor McCormack, from the Melbourne Law School at the University of Melbourne will help the Office of the Prosecutor to develop a solid understanding of complex legal issues such...
The wide-ranging book, which is edited by Carsten Stahn and Larissa van den Herik and published by Cambridge/TMC Asser, is well worth checking out. Here is the table of contents: Part I. The Influence of Scholars and Practitioners on the Development and Conceptualization of International Criminal Law: 1. 'Satires of circumstance': some notes on war crimes trials and irony...
At least according to Dominic Hughes, a BBC reporter who obviously can't be bothered to know what he's talking about: Perhaps not surprisingly Radovan Karadzic has been a reluctant participant in this trial. The former leader of the Bosnian Serbs has appeared just a few times, regularly boycotting the process. Apparently, "once" now qualifies as "regularly." Good job, BBC! ADDENDUM: Hughes also claims that...
Both Humblelawstudent and Stuart Taylor have criticized my previous post. Both misunderstand the federal torture statute and the concept of torture in important -- and unfortunately all too common -- ways, so it is worth explaining their errors in a separate post. Let's begin with HLS. He claims that, contrary to my assertion, "the statute requires the interrogator to actually...
David Luban and Stuart Taylor are having an interesting exchange at Balkinization over whether the CIA's use of waterboarding qualifies as torture under the federal torture statute, 18 USC 2340. Luban accuses Taylor of embracing "the fundamental trick used by the torture lawyers: pretending that the legal definition of 'torture' is something technical rather than 'colloquial'," when...
