This week the Legal Affairs Debate Club hosted an interesting discussion between Eric Posner and Oona Hathaway on the value of international law. The central issue explored: If international courts and tribunals have been such a failure, why do states keep creating and joining them? ...
I'm no fan of the ICC, but it is still worthwhile to keep an eye on what it is up to. Thus far, the ICC is fairly dormant, although they do have a few referrals arising out of the various conflicts in Africa. The ICC announced yesterday the assignment of this case from the Central African Republic to a...
Chris's colleague Timothy Zick has posted an article ,"Are The States Sovereign?" (January 2005). Washington University Law Quarterly, Vol. 83, No. 1, May 2005. The article analyzes the sovereignty of the states of the Union through the lens of international relations theory. This certainly sounds like an interesting approach to a devilishly complicated problem. Although IR theory is not usually...
Like Kenneth Anderson, it's taken a while for me to digest the Breyer-Scalia "conversation" on foreign law and constitutional interpretation from last week. As I hinted at earlier, I was disappointed with Breyer's comments because they simply offered no coherent rationale for why he feels it necessary or useful to cite foreign law when interpreting the Constitution. I'm sorry, Peggy,...
I'm a big fan of Harold Koh, who was one of my professors in law school, because he serves as a great role model for all law students interested in international law, government service, and legal academia. That said, I find one important element of his critique very unconvincing. Let me put aside his arguments about whether the controversial August 1,...
The testimony of Harold Koh, the Dean of Yale Law School and former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the nomination of Alberto Gonzales has been made available here. The Gonzales nomination and the related issues of the "Torture Memoranda" have been discussed at length in many public fora. I point...
As a follow-up to Julian's earlier post, I wanted to note that one of the co-authors of the recent paper assessing bias at the ICJ, Prof. Eric Posner of ther University of Chicago School of Law, will be speaking on this topic at Columbia Law School in New York on January 24th at 4:10 pm. The talk will be in...
Julian, I would place CIA officials in much the same category as FSOs, particularly those working under FSO cover at foreign embassies. Limitations on the speech of CIA officials are arguably more important, since the protection of intelligence sources and methods is crucial to our national security. That said, I have no problem with the publication of Michael Scheuer's book, Imperial...
Peggy, I can't resist just a quick note in defense of one of my favorite blogs, the Diplomad, which you slapped down quite effectively here. I don't have any reason to doubt that you are right that FS rules and FS norms that are being violated here. But I don't see why FSOs should be prevented from anonymous sniping...
Just so they are not left off the international institution reform bandwagon, the WTO released a study yesterday by a panel of eminent persons proposing certain reforms. The news coverage has been light, especially when compared to the possible reforms at the UN, but this could be just as significant in many ways. I will blog about the report in more...
Kenneth Anderson has an interesting take on today's news reports about changes at the UN and about UN reform more generally. ...
The UN Millennium Commission issued its report yesterday on how to combat world poverty. The bottom line: extreme poverty and death by preventable disease can be sharply reduced over the next decade by doubling the amount the developed world spends on aid to the poorest countries. In real terms, that means increasing development assistance from less than .25 percent of...
