Dianne Feinstein introduced a bill on Monday which would shut down Guantanamo. (Not clear whether it would also shut down the military commissions - the bill calls for release, detention as an enemy combatant, or prosecution before an Article II court or "military legal proceeding before a regularly-constituted court," which of course the commissions are deemed by the MCA.)...
I said a few days ago that I wanted to do a few posts on the unusual topic of the intersection between genocide and religion. Let me start this discussion by asking whether religion is somehow a factor in the decisionmaking process of those who choose to stand up and resist genocide. That was the question raised a...
Many thanks to all of yesterday’s commenters. I guess that we are in agreement on the fact that the Court did apply Common Article 3 as treaty law, not as customary law or the ‘common law of war.’ Marty makes it quite clear why the Court did so – by interpreting CA3 as a treaty obligation, the Hamdan decision, formally...
Apparently, U.S. presidential candidate Sen. John McCain is reading Anne Marie Slaughter (but then again, who is not)? Yesterday, McCain delivered an address outlining his vision of a "League of Democracies" that could act outside the U.N. system. We should go further and start bringing democratic peoples and nations from around the world into one common organization, a worldwide League...
Here's a recent decision out of the Ninth Circuit finding a Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation treaty not to preempt state employment law, at least not with respect a whistlerblower statute. (H/T: David Zaring and the Administrative LawProf Blog.) But I was unaware that FCN treaties do allow discrimination on the basis of nationality, in favor of nationals of...
In this post I will briefly explain the three (or four) different arguments presented in the Jinks, Goodman and Slaughter amicus brief, and how the Court’s judgment reflects these arguments. These are: (1) Hamdan was captured in the course of the international armed conflict between the United States and Afghanistan. He is arguably entitled to POW status, and the CSRT procedure does...
My colleague, Jaya Ramji-Nogales, writing over at IntLawGrrls, is reporting a settlement of the dispute over bar dues between foreign defense counsel and the Cambodian Bar Association. The compromise--a one time bar fee for foreign lawyers of $500--removes the last of many roadblocks that had been holding up the tribunal for months. It now looks like this hybrid...
As announced in today's orders, the Supreme Court has granted certiorari in Medellin v. Texas. Cert. briefs are available here. Not surprising, given that both Mexico and the United States filed amicus briefs supporting the grant of cert. ...
The Court’s holding and reasoning in Hamdan are unclear on one crucial issue: whether the United States is legally engaged in an armed conflict with the al Qaeda terrorist organization. Why is this issue so important? Well, the entire legal strategy of the Bush administration depends on it, both internationally and domestically, as vastly different rules of international and...
My thanks to Chris and to the other permanent contributors for inviting me to guest blog here at Opinio Juris. During my first week I'll post on some rather disturbing things I've discovered on the US Supreme Court's decision-making process while I was doing research for a new article of mine, entitled 'Lessons for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in...
For the next couple of weeks, we are happy to have Marko Milanovic join us as a guest blogger. Marko is currently serving as law clerk to Judge Thomas Buergenthal of the International Court of Justice. He obtained his first degree in law from the University of Belgrade, Serbia, and his LL.M from the University of Michigan. Prior to his...
I would hazard that most undergraduate students have very little introduction to international law and if they do, it likely will come in a political science class. Of course a political science major likely will be exposed to international law in some upper-level classes, but the overwhelming majority of students do not venture beyond PoliSci 101. If these assumptions are...
