In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Author: Peter Spiro

14 Mar

This from Gianluca Parolin in EUI's excellent EU Democracy Observatory on Citizenship on proposed changes to Egypt's constitution regarding presidential eligibility: The current text (albeit suspended) requires the candidate to be an Egyptian citizen born of Egyptian parents.  The proposed text further requires the candidate and his (sic!) parents never to have acquired a foreign citizenship (thereby excluding...

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09 Mar

"Is Syria the next domino?"  That's an official source asking, the State Department's e-diplomacy unit, tweeting under the somewhat awkward handle eDipAtState. Tweets from eDipAtState run the gamut, mostly re-tweets from other sources, but they suggestively tilt towards the next freedom fight.  Iran, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe, Belarus -- these are places were the US is on record as supporting change.  But...

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25 Feb

We already knew that Muammar scion Saif Gaddafi had written a dissertation at LSE entitled “The Role of Civil Society in the Democratisation of Global Governance Institutions: From Soft Power to Collective Decision Making?” But I didn't know that it was slated to be published by Oxford University Press.  This at HuffPo from Ben Barber (who, ahem, knows something about...

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02 Feb

Perhaps not getting the coverage it might in the face of more important developments elsewhere: Pakistan continues to hold Raymond Davis, a US government official posted to Lahore, in the killing of two Pakistanis last week despite protests from the US that the official is entitled to diplomatic immunity.  Here's a report from the LA Times; here's a more detailed...

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06 Jan

If as expected Southern Sudan votes to secede in this weekend's referendum, territorial boundaries should be drawn neatly enough.  Boundaries of human community may be more difficult. At issue is the status of southerners resident in the north and vice versa.  The risk is that these individuals won't end up with citizenship in their place of residence, making them vulnerable to...

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04 Jan

As of early 2009, it's officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia.  (Okay, news travels slowly to Philadelphia; perhaps to your town, too?)  That may seem like a technical change, but Stanford geographer Martin W. Lewis makes the case that it gives the lie to the very concept of nationhood as we conventionally understand it: The idea of the nation-state has become...

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03 Jan

Julia Preston's lead story in yesterday's NYT Times highlighted the shift to state governments as immigration battlegrounds.  Several are looking to be SB 1070 copycats.  I don't think those will go anywhere in the face of quiet but intense opposition from the business community, who want the cheap labor and who don't want to be in the cross-hairs of the...

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23 Dec

Another Indian diplomat gets the treatment, this time in Austin.  Colum Lynch has this useful wrap in WaPo on the issue of diplomats and security screening, see also my post about another recent incident in Mississippi. I don't get it:  Why don't diplomats get a pass, like crew?  Has there ever been a terrorist attack undertaken by an accredited diplomat?  It...

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21 Dec

From a new pamphlet, Why Does Sovereignty Matter to America? Merry Christmas from the folks at the Heritage Foundation: [T]oday, our sovereignty faces new threats. International organizations and courts seek to reshape the international system. Nations are to give up their sovereignty and be governed by a “global consensus.” Independent, sovereign nations will be replaced by “transnational” organizations that reject national...

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16 Dec

Secretary Clinton yesterday released the much-awaited first Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review.  It's an important document, and if implemented (a big if, given the shift in Congress and threats to cut State's funding) it would have important consequences on the ground.  The central theme of "civilian power" has a nice ring to it in the context of situating diplomacy, a...

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16 Dec

Video here.  (Downfall producers seem to have unblocked these parodies, which had been taken down some time ago for copyright reasons.  Lawprofs might be entertained by this one, clearly composed by someone in our ranks -- the mindset of someone who's taught for a while is perfectly satirized in a way that no outsider could, ever.)...

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