The Ninth Circuit rendered an important decision last week regarding a class action § 1983 claim for damages for violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. In Cornejo v. County of San Diego the plaintiffs argued that they could bring a § 1983 claim for monetary damages for "deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the...
Careful readers of the blog will have noticed the addition of a "linkroll" on our left sidebar several weeks ago. (Hat tip to Gordon Smith for the idea.) The feature allows us to point readers to selected items of interest (no aspirations to comprehensive coverage) that we might not get to in our regular posts. We'll hope sometimes...
Good news so far from the never-ending softwood lumber dispute between Canada and the U.S. Things are moving along very quickly. As Roger has noted, the U.S. and Canada decided to send all future disputes about softwood lumber to the London Court of International Arbitration, a group that normally hears disputes between private parties only. What is weird is...
I didn't notice this until just now, but U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs Kristen Silverberg set up a sort of mini-blog reviewing her activities at the U.N. General Assembly meetings in New York last week. It is actually a good idea (and Silverberg cuts a far more appealing figure than one of her predecessors, John...
Peter recently criticized the new U.S. test for naturalization, arguing that instead of tinkering with the questions, it would be better "to drop the test altogether and recognize the fading distinctiveness of the national community." Wise words — ones regrettably ignored by Australia's new citizenship test, which is being widely described as "stupid," "xenophobic," and "racist":Prospective Australian citizens will...
A number of progressive bloggers are having fun with Michael Medved's new column, "Six Inconvenient Truths about the U.S. and Slavery." Much of the criticism of the right-wing radio host's column has focused on the following passage, in which Medved seems to argue that the real victims of the slave trade were the slave traders themselves, who lost much...
Yesterday, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC) held the first of two hearings on U.S. accession to the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The hearing gave the Administration its chance to elaborate on why President Bush so strongly favors U.S. accession as soon as possible. You can access the testimony of...
A federal district court in Washington has ruled that the answer is no. In Biton v. Palestinian Interim Self-Government Authority, the court ruled that it had jurisdiction over the Palestinian Authority, and that recent developments do not confer sovereign immunity on defendant. The defendant argued that: We recognize that the court previously has held that [D]efendants are collaterally estopped...
With all the press about the recent annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative, I thought it was worth opening up some discussion about this new organization. If you spend a few minutes on the webpage, or read a few articles about the annual meeting, you cannot help but be impressed. This is not Davos, or the Aspen...
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (who ever thought we'd be nostalgic for the INS?) rolled out its revamped naturalization test with great fanfare yesterday, and managed to get some pretty extensive media play with it (fronted in the NY Times, for instance). But as I wrote when a pilot version was rolled out late last year, there isn't really...
A few weeks ago, I mentioned my colleague John Ip's new essay "Comparative Perspectives on the Detention of Terrorist Suspects," which recently appeared in a symposium issue (edited by our colleague Tung Yin) of Transnational Law & Contemporary Problems. John's essay is now available on SSRN. Here is a snippet of the abstract:This article examines the different approaches...
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...
