On Wednesday the House of Lords issued an important decision on libel law in the case of Jameel v. Wall Street Journal. The New York Times has a report here and the London Times has reports here and here. More later. ...
Quick story. A friend of mine who teaches at a prestigious law school in Israel said to me recently that he experiences tremendous pressure to publish law review articles in English rather than Hebrew. He said for reputational reasons his academic peers in Israel strongly prefer English-language publications over Hebrew-language publications. That makes sense to me for...
Here is an excerpt of a letter from a Marine stationed in Iraq that was recently published in Time magazine. As Time put it, "His honest but wry narration and unusually frank dissection of the mission contrasts sharply with the story presented by both sides of the Iraq war debate, the Pentagon spin masters and fierce critics." Rather than...
Here is the mock trial problem of People v. Campbell about schoolyard terrorism: People v. Campbell is the trial of Casey Campbell, a senior at Park Lane High School. Casey is alleged to have placed a bomb in a trash can near the school’s cafeteria. The defendant is charged with placing a bomb on school grounds, attempting to explode a device...
The Pew Research Center did an interesting poll last week that underscored the importance of international issues for the mid-term elections. The poll revealed that 51% of voters say "national issues" matter more than local concerns in their vote for Congress. Just 23% say local issues will be more important than national issues to their vote. And...
In case you missed it, the Supreme Court is now offering same-day transcripts of oral arguments. The first example came in the immigration case of Lopez v. Gonzalez. Don't miss the end of the transcript where there is an extremely useful index. If you want to see whether the oral argument in this statutory construction case addressed...
With the Supreme Court's new term now underway I was interested in exploring the cases on the docket relevant to our field. So far it appears that the docket is remarkably thin in terms of cases that relate to foreign relations, international law and/or comparative constitutionalism. Of course, it is possible and even likely that more interesting IL/IR...
My vote for the most important international law case in the month of September is the ECJ decision in Commission v. Netherlands. The case is important in articulating the standard for the free movement of capital and affirming the protections guaranteed to foreign investors under the EC Treaty. It is another significant blow to government practices put in...
I just came across the text of the statements by the military leaders of the coup in Thailand. I was dumbstruck by how, well, polite they were in terminating the Constitution and disbanding the government. Here is the money quote: "Now the Administrative Reform Group under the Democratic System with the King as the Head of State, comprising commanders...
Today is a significant day for the selection of the next UN Secretary-General. A third straw poll among the Security Council members occurs today. It appears that South Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Ban Ki-moon is the choice. The New York Times has interviews of most of the candidates here, and a leading blog covering...
The comments thus far have been quite interesting and I am very pleased that David Moore and Beth Stephens are participating in this online workshop with us on the forthcoming article by Curtis Bradley, Jack Goldsmith, and David. For the sake of space, I will not discuss my points of agreement with the article and will simply pose a...
Paul Volcker has issued an important call for UN reform in the introduction to a new book on the Oil-for-Food scandal. In the just published book, Good Intentions Corrupted edited by Jeffrey Meyer and Mark Califano, Volcker outlines his conclusions regarding the need for reform at the United Nations. Some of these recommendations have been reported before, but...
