The West has shown an impressive display of shock and disgust in response to Ahmadinejad's remarks yesterday that the Holocaust is a myth. But as reported here, the silence from the Arab world has been deafening. "While official Arab reaction in such cases is usually slower than international reaction, any issue involving a defense of Israel is a...
Pajamas Media has a nice set of stories from Kerbala, Basra, Baghdad, Babil, Mosul, Kirkuk and elsewhere in Iraq on the Iraqi elections. Just click here and then the left-hand menu gives you snapshot stories and pictures of the election in different cities. This is very interesting stuff coming out of Pajamas Media, although I must say the contrast between...
If someone sexually assaults a woman in Canadian territorial waters, where would you expect that person to be prosecuted? Why, in Alaska of course. Earlier this week the Alaska Supreme Court rendered an unusual decision in State v. Jack addressing the question of whether a state criminal statute against sexual assault could be applied extraterritorially to prosecute someone who committed...
While on the subject of the Holocaust, in case you missed it, the madness of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is now nearing clinical diagnosis with his latest remarks. As reported in the New York Times, Ahmadinejad had this to say today: "Today, they have created a myth in the name of Holocaust and consider it to be above God, religion and the...
The book that Michael Bazyler and I have been working on for over two years, Holocaust Restitution: Perspectives on the Litigation and Its Legacy (Bazyler & Alford, eds., 2006) is now available for purchase at Amazon here or NYU Press here. The book has received good reviews (available here) such as IAGS President Israel Charney's blurb that the book...
An English translation of the Swedish Supreme Court decision in Åke Green was sent to me today by the religious liberty organization Alliance Defense Fund. A copy of the English translation is here (UPDATE: link now fixed). The original Swedish Supreme Court decision is here. In brief, the case involved the prosecution of pastor Åke Green for hate speech for...
Two stories on choosing between publishing in a mid-level mainline journal and an international law journal: Story Number 1: I had a colleague a few years back who was going up for tenure that year and had outstanding offers to publish her article from the Harvard International Law Journal and the Rutgers Law Review. She was particularly concerned...
On the lighter side of international law, over the weekend a law student was crowned Miss World 2005. You would think the most beautiful law student in the world would attend the most beautiful law school, (as ranked by 100,000 students who attend elsewhere). But no, Unnur Birna Vilhjalmsdottir, 21, is a law student in Iceland of all places, and...
The text of Mohamed El-Baradei's Nobel Peace Prize Lecture is here. It is quite good. It is perhaps too utopian for my taste, but if any group deserves utopian license it is that category of individuals known as Nobel Peace laureates. We may have in El-Baradei a prophet of peace from (and for) the Arab world.The speech is hopeful, cosmopolitan,...
In 1933, his first year as chancellor, Adolph Hitler began boycotting Jewish shops. By 1935 he deprived Jews of German citizenship. In early 1938, laws were passed restricting Jewish economic activity. In October 1938, thousands of Polish Jews were deported. Then, on the nights of November 9-10, 1938, a pogrom was unleashed on Jewish businesses as gangs of Nazi youth...
What if contract law scholars never studied the end game? What if they offered little to no analysis of early contract termination, rescission, or frustration of purpose? What if the entire focus of contract law was on contract formation, performance and breach, and that any unilateral lawful attempts to avoid contractual obligations were looked at with a jaundiced...
An international survey of nine countries reveals that in no surveyed country except two do a majority of respondents maintain that torture is never justified. A majority in four countries maintain that it rarely, sometimes, or often is justified. In response to the question, “How do you feel about the use of torture against suspected terrorists to obtain...
