At the middle school where my children attend they offer three modern foreign languages: Spanish, French, and Mandarin Chinese. Rarely does a parent of a pre-teen have the opportunity to directly influence their future career opportunities, not to mention personal enlightenment, so dramatically as when we encourage them to take several years of this language or that language. In making...
Japan has deposited its instruments of ratification with the UN, making it the 105th member of the International Criminal Court. Japan instantly becomes the Court's most important financial backer, responsible for 19% of its modest $124 million budget. It will be interesting to see if that status translates into actual power on the Court -- Japan has announced...
Earlier this week, Prosecutors (finally) filed their introductory submission to the judges of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, supposedly identifying five suspects responsible for genocide and other atrocities committed during the Khmer Rouge regime. My colleague Jaya Ramji-Nogales (aka Lakshmi Bai) has the details over at IntLawGrrls. ...
On July 20, 2007, President Bush signed an Executive Order fulfilling the requirements of the Military Commissions Act (MCA) that he provide interpretations of the “meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions . . . for violations of treaty obligations which are not grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions.” Here are the most relevant portions of that EO --...
In 1999, Libya made a number of arrests in conjunction with the contraction of HIV by hundreds of Libyan children. In 2004, six of the defendants (five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian who, depending on whose version you believe, was either a physician or a mere trainee) were convicted of intentionally infecting over 400 children with HIV at a...
Yesterday Richard Branson announced the establishment of a group of senior leaders from around the world who would lend their considerable experience and diplomatic “star power” to addressing various international crises ranging from violent conflicts, to AIDS, to climate change, among various possible issues. Although the description of the group, known as the Elders, reminded me...
If you ever wondered what your carbon footprint number was, you can calculate it here. What is most remarkable is that if this calculator is correct, it is not what you drive but how often you fly that really impacts your carbon footprint. (7.5 tons per year is the average). Thus, you can drive a Toyota Prius...
[Ronald Krotoszynski is Visiting John S. Stone Chair of Law, University of Alabama School of Law & Professor of Law, Washington and Lee University School of Law. His recent scholarship includes The First Amendment in Cross-Cultural Perspective: A Comparative Legal Analysis of the Freedom of Speech (NYU Press 2006)] In the United States, we have a decided tendency to...
Britain's upping the ante with the expulsion of four Russian diplomats (more details here and here) had me wondering whether Russia's refusal to extradite alleged poison plotter Alexander Lugovoi comprises a violation of international law. It looks to me like Russia is pretty clearly within its formal IL rights here. There's no bilateral extradition treaty in...
Continuing the discussion on the establishment of a domestic national security court, be sure to check out Amos Guiora's post over at National Security Advisors law blog outlining his recent article forthcoming in the Catholic University Law Review on a "domestic terror court." The article is very useful because it takes a comparative approach that examines the practices of...
Over at Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall nicely debunks the tired right-wing talking point on Iraq that if there had been opinion polling during WW II, we would have seen support for the war drop every time the U.S. military suffered a setback. As it turns out, such opinion polling did exist — and nothing could be further from...
At least that's my guess, based on yesterday's news reports that President Putin had signed a decree that will lead to Russia's suspension of its participation in the 1990 Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE). For those unfamiliar with it, the CFE constituted a landmark arms control agreement, establishing parity in major conventional forces and armaments between...
