In Jose Alvarez's president's column this month over at the ASIL website, Jeff Dunoff, Steve Ratner, and David Wippman defend their leading casebook against French charges that American approaches to international law are too realist, too interdisciplinary, and too US-centric. I think their arguments are pretty persuasive. US policy may not lately have had much to offer to...
The UN Global Compact convened a "leaders summit" in Geneva this past Friday and Saturday, drawing hundreds of corporate officers, NGO and IO representatives. Though most participants look to have been at the senior VP level or equivalent (here is the list), among them were the CEO of Coca-Cola, the Secretary-General of Amnesty International, and a handful of academics...
Here's an op-ed from Jack Goldsmith and Jeremy Rabkin in today's WaPo lamenting the Bush Administration's decision to support ratification of the Law of the Sea Treaty. The piece fits a sovereigntist template: describe formal capacities of a new international institution, spin out way in which in theory it could restrain core US discretion, and voila — signing on...
Curtis Bradley has posted an advance version of a forthcoming piece in the Supreme Court Review on last term's decision in Sanchez-Llamas v. Oregon. It's well worth a close read, although I think it ultimately makes too much out of a case that is at best way-station material. The piece for instance argues that Sanchez-Llamas is more important...
That's what Thomas Geoghegan would like to see happen, as argued in this back-page piece in the latest issue of The American Prospect (teaser here). He argues that Kyoto, the Rome Statute, and human rights treaties should all get the NAFTA/WTO treatment, and that a Democrat president who looks to do things the old-fashioned way will be "looking straight...
Though it didn't get much media play, the US Helsinki Commission held hearings yesterday on Guantanamo Bay. I don't think it was particularly notable on the substance, though Legal Adviser John Bellinger did allow that the Administration is "working to move to the day that Guantánamo could be closed." What's more interesting is the genealogy of the hearings....
It's not every day that international law scholars show up on the Comedy Channel, but here's a clip of Anne-Marie Slaughter on the Colbert Report. (Thanks to Ed Swaine for the pointer.) Slaughter's new book, The Idea That Is America: Keeping Faith with Our Values in a Dangerous World, appears to be getting more than the usual push...
Okay, no sucha thing, as my five-year-old boy would say. It's part of the marvelous counter-historical backdrop to Michael Chabon's new novel, The Yiddish Policemen's Union. The premise is that several million Jews were extended "Ickes passports" early in the war (thus reducing the toll of the Holocaust by two-thirds), a population thereafter swollen by the defeat of...
Vanity Fair has a special issue devoted to the subject. The issue is guest-edited by Bono, with 20 different covers at the newstand featuring evryone from Brad Pitt to Condi Rice to Madonna. I took the $4.50 hit for Opinio Juris readers (our crossover audience is probably in the single digits). What can you say, it's an...
That's at the center of this interesting piece from Adam Liptak in today's NY Times, on an Alien Tort Statute claim alleging the enslavement of child jockeys in the camel-racing business. The case was brought by the class-action firm Motley Rice against two camel owners who also happen to be high-ranking officials of the United Arab Emirates. (Isn't...
International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers. Not exactly Memorial Day -- not yet, at least. Today, cultural sites; tomorrow, our federal holidays. Can the black helicopters and global income taxes be far behind? For those of you who want to start your vacation planning, here's the new calendar. ...
Here is the Amazon pre-order page for "The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration," due out in September. According to the publicity material, the book promises to "show why Bush's apparent indifference to human rights has damaged his presidency and, perhaps, his standing in history." Is sovereigntism losing another of its leading exponents? This...
