In response to the book, Does Human Rights Need God, there is an interesting discussion over at Mirror of Justice (see here, here, and here) about the source of international human rights. As excerpted in this post, Robert George argues that “Most, but not all, natural law theorists are theists. They believe that the moral order, like every other...
Like you, I am good friends with millionaires living in Nigeria. If only I would renew my contact with them I could continue my business relationship and secure the millions that I am due as part of the partnership. I have been negligent in giving them my bank details to assist with the bank transfer, but for some...
This candid conversation between President Bush and Prime Minister Blair is one of those very rare occasions where we get to be a fly on the wall and hear a private conversation between two heads of state discussing an international crisis. The video and audio from CNN is here. Here is a transcript provided by the BBC (with a...
CNN has a great new feature that publishes emails of personal stories of people experiencing the war in the Middle East. Here is a taste: I am a Lebanese American currently staying at my family's country residence in Shemlan, Lebanon, located in the mountains above Beirut. My fiance and I came here with the intentions of writing our graduate school...
Robert Wright has an interesting op-ed in the New York Times on "Progressive Realism." He attempts to argue for a new foreign policy that embraces both neo-con realism and liberal idealism. He calls it progressive realism. The gist of it is to redefine American self-interest broadly enough to morph national interest into concern for global human welfare. ...
Here is a nice summary of the present conflict and some basic information about Hezbollah from the Council on Foreign Relations website. Bottom line is this is a political organization in Lebanon that has twenty-three seats in the 128-member Lebanese Parliament and two ministers in the Lebanese government. In this sense it is clearly not like Al Qaeda,...
Yesterday the Caspian Sea pipeline opened. As noted here, the $4 billion pipeline will deliver oil from Baku, Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey’s Mediterranean coast. With the ability to pump one million barrels of oil per day, the pipeline is over a thousand miles long and is expected to supply 7 percent of the world's oil supply....
Professor Ken Anderson has some belated and interesting commentary on the Hamdan decision over at his blog. He questions the buzz about the wholesale application of the Geneva Conventions in light of the characterization of the war on terror as a conflict "not of an international character." Here is an excerpt: [T]here are analytic problems with the Court's reasoning...
There is a firestorm brewing in the United Kingdom over the attempted extradition of three NatWest bankers allegedly involved in the Enron scandal. The nub of the problem is the US-UK Extradition Treaty has been signed into British law through legislation passed in 2003, but the U.S. Senate has yet to ratify the treaty. As a result the UK is...
A federal district court in Nevada last week issued an interesting international environmental law decision that is worthy of note. The case is Consejo de Desarrollo Economico de Mexicali v. United States, 2006 WL 1875380, and is not available online. Quick facts: A canal known as the All-American Canal provides a route for the delivery of water from the Colorado...
The Eastern District of New York issued an important decision last week in the case of Stutts v. De Dietrich Group, 2006 WL 1867060. The decision is not available online, although the original complaint is available here. The Court held that the Geneva Convention of 1925 is not self-executing and that the relevant U.N. Security Council Resolutions do...
As best I can tell from a cursory read of the recent New York Court of Appeals same-sex marriage case of Hernandez v. Robles, there is no mention of comparative experiences in other countries. Save one. And it comes from Judge Kaye in dissent. Here it is: The State asserts an interest in maintaining uniformity with the marriage...
