The common refrain of constitutional comparativists is that foreign experiences offer persuasive authority that may serve as a useful guide to judges in their constitutional decision-making. The idea is, as Justice Breyer has argued, that since all modern democracies are facing the same basic problems and are searching for the same basic answers, why not examine how other constitutional...
. Canada has requested WTO consultations over the decision by several European countries to ban the sale of seal fur from Canada. Belgium and the Netherlands recently adopted bans on the import of seal fur, citing the cruelty of the annual Canadian seal hunts, which allegedly involve clubbing young seals on the head. This is kind of an odd...
I have posted a substantially revised version of my essay "Mistake of Legal Element, the Common Law, and Article 32 of the Rome Statute: A Critical Analysis" on SSRN. The essay is now forthcoming in the Journal of International Criminal Justice. Here is the abstract:Article 32(2) of the Rome Statute provides that "[a] mistake of law may...
Bush at the United Nations today:In Sudan, innocent civilians are suffering repression -- and in the Darfur region, many are losing their lives to genocide. America has responded with tough sanctions against those responsible for the violence. We've provided more than $2 billion in humanitarian and peacekeeping aid. I look forward to attending a Security Council meeting that will focus...
The Sudanese government has proven endlessly creative at resisting genuine progress toward peace, but I don't think this strategy is going to do it much good:The Sudanese government has begun filing a defamation lawsuit against Amnesty International for a report on torture against political prisoners in the country, the justice minister said Wednesday. The London-based rights group said in statement last...
U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney has joined a growing public movement to "indict" Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for incitement to commit genocide against Israelis. In his letter to the U.N. Secretary General from last week (and developed more here), Romney writes, If President Ahmadinejad sets foot in the United States, he should be handed an indictment under the Genocide Convention....
I have had two wonderful days at Princeton's Center for Theological Inquiry with Jeremy Waldron, Mary Ellen O'Connell, Nicholas Grief and noted theologians discussing the intersection between theology and international law. One of the topics that came up was whether international law is teleological. My strong assumption is yes. Albert Schweitzer in his Nobel Peace Prize lecture talks about...
Local actors are having a foreign policy field day lately. Yesterday, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger accepted an invitation from the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and addressed the U.N. General Assembly. You can watch the Governor’s speech here (or read a transcript here). Schwarzenegger’s speech focused on what California is doing about climate change. Emphasizing that...
The U.S. Court of Military Commission Review, created by last year's Military Commissions Act of 2006, has issued a ruling reversing a lower military commission judge who refused to assert jurisdiction over Gitmo detainees charged by the U.S. I don't have any time right now to analyze this, but here is the decision, United States v. Khadr, hot off...
Kudos to the State Department for launching the Digital Outreach Team, a.k.a. the Foggy Bottom Bloggers. As reported here, they are doing marvelous work spreading the message of tolerance and dialogue to Middle East blogs frequented by radical Muslims. The team concentrates on about a dozen mainstream Web sites such as chat rooms set up by the BBC and Al...
For those of you not blessed (or cursed) to live in the New York area, you may not have noticed the chorus of local outrage over Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's request to visit "Ground Zero", the site of the former World Trade Center in New York during his attendance at the U.N. General Assembly opening session next month. I actually...
Now you too can become a micro-lender to the working poor with Kiva. I just learned about Kiva this past week and I find it just incredible. As the websites describes it, "Kiva lets you connect with and loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world. By choosing a business on Kiva.org, you can "sponsor a...
