Many thanks to Eric Posner and Adrian Vermeule for agreeing to participate in this online symposium about their book "Terror in the Balance." As Julian put it, "their analysis is helpful for advancing the debate over balancing national security and individual rights" and may well "inspire critics to shift their efforts from complaining about the current administration and executive...
Chapter seven in "Terror in the Balance" has an interesting discussion of censorship as part of the war on terror. As Posner and Vermeule note, the Bush administration has not utilized this tool to fight terrorism, although the United Kingdom has. I agree with most of what Posner and Vermeule say about censorship. Certainly when you read about...
I wanted to respond to a key section of Posner and Vermeule’s book rejecting absolute prohibitions of torture. They argue that very few moral philosophers have held to the position that coercive interrogation is absolutely impermissible as a violation of rights rooted in human dignity or autonomy. As discussed in the previous post, they suggest that an absolute...
As we have discussed, Part I of Posner and Vermeule’s book offered broad theoretical justifications for the historical deference that courts have afforded the executive in times of emergency, and rebutted systemic arguments of civil libertarians. In Part II of their book, Posner and Vermeule apply their tradeoff thesis to specific contexts. They emphasize that they do not...
The first part of Posner and Vermeule’s book offers a forceful theoretical defense of executive authority during times of emergency. The book offers a thoughtful and well-reasoned perspective on the cost-benefit analysis at play when government seeks the optimal balance between the competing goods of security and liberty. Posner and Vermeule argue that there is a Pareto security-liberty...
Opinio Juris is very pleased to host for the next few days an online symposium on Eric Posner and Adrian Vermeule’s new book, Terror in the Balance recently published by Oxford University Press. The format for this symposium will be familiar to those who followed the symposium we held three weeks ago on Michael Ramsey’s book, The Constitution’s Text in Foreign...
I just learned of a wonderful new way to support your favorite nonprofit organization. It is called MissionFish. Essentially nonprofits register with MissionFish, and then Ebay sellers can agree to donate all or part of the proceeds from any Ebay sale they make to the nonprofit of their choice. Once the item sells, the seller gets paid...
The Softwood Lumber Agreement (SLA) signed between Canada and the United States in October 2006 is headed to arbitration. As reported in a USTR press release, U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab said that “It is truly regrettable that, just ten months after the Agreement entered into force, the United States has no choice but to initiate arbitration proceedings to...
A federal district court has rendered an interesting memorandum opinion on whether plaintiffs in the Kenyan embassy bombing case are entitled to a jury in the determination of damages. The case also raises important questions on the applicable law in the calculation of ATS damages. Here is an excerpt from Mwani v. Bin Laden: The 523 Plaintiffs include Kenyan...
Joseph Raz of Oxford University has published on SSRN a short essay entitled "Human Rights Without Foundations" that is getting a lot of play, with over 150 downloads in less than a month. He offers a theory of human rights that rejects the notion that human rights must encompass universal norms and instead argues for a political approach to...
A federal district court in Washington D.C. has rendered an important decision imposing limits on the scope of terrorism claims. In Oveissi v. Iran, the court addressed an action "aris[ing] from the death of Gholam Ali Oveissi, chief of the Iranian armed forces under the Shah's pre-revolutionary government, who was gunned down on a Paris street in February 1984....
While we are on the subject of Michael Ramsey's book, I thought I would note that Justice Samuel Alito is currently teaching at Pepperdine Law School a two-week seminar from July 30 to August 10 on the War Powers Clause. The public announcement about the course is available here. According to the announcement, "Justice Alito indicated that the...
