As widely reported in the British press, but completely ignored by the American one, Britain's most senior generals have issued a public warning that the West's military campaign in Afghanistan is facing catastrophic failure — with catastrophic consequences:Lord Inge, the former chief of the defence staff, highlighted their fears in public last week when he warned of a 'strategic...
Thomas Pickering, probably the most respected career diplomat of his generation, and Vern Clark, a retired U.S. Navy admiral and former chief of U.S. naval operations, have an op-ed in today's Times debunking the fear-mongering on the Law of the Sea Treaty. Pickering and Clark note some of the Treaty's advantages:The treaty provides our military the rights of navigation, by water...
At least if they are blogging about baseball. Amazing success story about a blogger impacting the pitching strategy of Seattle Mariner's Felix Hernandez. Baseball blogger writes open letter to Mariners' pitching coach. Coach shows letter to Hernandez. Hernandez adjusts pitching and throws no-hitter in eight innings. (Tip: Michael Froomkin) Would that we could somehow measure success with...
With the recent interest in the Goldsmith and Katyal op-ed calling for a National Security Court, I just wanted to point out (as Ben Davis did in the comments to the previous post) a piece written last year by Glenn Sulmasy, a law professor at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, calling for just such a court. He has also written...
It's not every day that I get to link to ESPN.com on this blog, but the website is currently featuring a fascinating article on Dubai's efforts to turn the country into a sporting paradise.Dubai is the second richest — behind Abu Dhabi — of the seven emirates comprising the United Arab Emirates that stretch along a narrow crescent between Saudi...
The NYTimes Lede has the story: Britain’s most senior judge, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, announced on Thursday that, starting Jan. 1, the wigs would no longer be worn in most trial courts; neither would gowns. Ending (at least for now) a long, hot debate over whether and how to modernize and simplify the elaborate standards of formal court dress, Lord...
Louis Renault (1843-1918), one of the founders of modern international law in France, once commented that "the small nations ...
Tom Goldstein has this post with a not-so-short list of possible nominees for the Supreme Court should a Democrat take the White House in 2008. I count only two internationalists out of the 30 on the list: Yale Law dean Harold Koh and Seventh Circuit judge Diane Wood. My question: why doesn't Koh make Goldstein's shorter list of nine "leading"...
Finally, a statement by the British government about Iraq that doesn't strain credulity:British forces have denied rumours that they released a plague of ferocious badgers into the Iraqi city of Basra. Word spread among the populace that UK troops had introduced strange man-eating, bear-like beasts into the area to sow panic. But several of the creatures, caught and killed by local farmers,...
On Wednesday, the European Court of Human Rights heard a critically important case, Saadi v. Italy, concerning the European Convention's absolute prohibition on deporting individuals to states where they face a real risk of torture or ill-treatment. A number of states, the UK foremost among them, are seeking to weaken that prohibition:The government of the United Kingdom, along with...
In today's New York Times, Jack Goldsmith and Neal Katyal have an interesting op-ed proposing that Congress create a special Article III "national security" court that would oversee a comprehensive system of preventive detention. Nearly six years after 9/11, the government’s system for detaining terrorists without charge or trial has harmed the reputation of the United States, disrupted alliances,...
In Jose Alvarez's president's column this month over at the ASIL website, Jeff Dunoff, Steve Ratner, and David Wippman defend their leading casebook against French charges that American approaches to international law are too realist, too interdisciplinary, and too US-centric. I think their arguments are pretty persuasive. US policy may not lately have had much to offer to...
