A federal court in California rendered a decision last week that included one of the most unusual references to international law I have ever seen. In the case of United States v. Slocum, 2007 WL 1290249, prison gang members Ronald Slocum (a.k.a. "McKool") and Henry Houston (a.k.a. "Tweek") received a message written in invisible ink from gang leaders outside...
Climate change notwithstanding, transboundary environmental relations between the United States and Canada seem increasingly frosty of late. As I wrote a few months back, Canada and the United States have tangled over construction and operation of an outlet from Devils Lake, North Dakota, and the project’s implications for U.S. obligations not to pollute Canadian waters under the 1909 Boundary...
I want to highly recommend my friend and colleague Mark Drumbl's new book Atrocity, Punishment, and International Law, which was just published by Cambridge University Press. The book defends two interrelated claims: (1) there is a fundamental difference between the “extraordinary” crimes that are punished at the international level (genocide, crimes against humanity, etc.) and the “ordinary” crimes that are punished...
How do you know when your Iraq policy has failed? When a Republican congressman defends it by quoting a general who not only fought for the Confederacy, but also founded the Ku Klux Klan:A Texas Republican Congressman invoked a founding Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan in a floor speech he delivered yesterday in support of the Iraq...
In 2005, the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) released a VERY long study on customary international humanitarian law. It is an impressive work, spanning more than 5000 pages, presenting the detailed and expansive views of an organization uniquely situated to know what rules have emerged binding states as a matter of custom, separate and apart from their...
ABC News is reporting that the U.S. Navy recently recalled an openly gay sailor to active duty:Petty Officer 2nd Class Jason Knight says the U.S. Navy knew he was gay, discharged him after he admitted his sexuality, and then recalled him last year to serve in the Middle East. The Navy disputes that Knight was ever officially known by the Pentagon...
The use of comparative jurisprudence in constitutional jurisprudence remain a very controversial issue, and one which I don’t want to go into in detail at this particular time. There’s one thing, however, that strikes me as rather interesting. Namely, at practically all of his appearances at which he discusses the use of foreign law, Justice Scalia loves using the European...
The Southern District of New York last week dismissed a class action lawsuit by plaintiffs alleging that Israel has been systematically committing acts of targeted assassination of suspected terrorists. In the case of Matar v. Dichter, the defendant Avraham Dichter was the former director of GSS, an Israeli security organization. The complaint alleges that the defendant “developed, implemented,...
I have consistently criticized the Bush administration's coddling of Luis Posada Carriles — most recently, its decision to charge him with making false statements during his naturalization interview instead of with committing terrorist acts. Nevertheless, to give credit where credit is due, it seems that the FBI is doing its best to prove that Posada was responsible for the...
Lest I be accused of being overly critical of the US Supreme Court, I will now try to the show what must qualify as one of the worst examples of manipulation and instrumentalization of international law in recent memory. Predictably, that legal manipulation was not a brain child of the Supreme Court, but of the ever inventive lawyers working for...
Last week, I noted that Japan will become a member the ICC in October. Interestingly, the Japanese government has indicated that it will not consider signing an Article 98 agreement with the U.S. after accession. That refusal will not have much practical effect, although there are approximately 50,000 U.S. soldiers on Japanese territory, more than half of whom...
Following up on my previous post, the military commander in charge of Guantanamo Bay, Rear Admiral Harry Harris, has announced that he no longer supports limiting defense attorneys to three visits with their internee clients:But in an interview with The Miami Herald and Saudi Press Agency on Wednesday evening, Rear Adm. Harry Harris, the commander, was supportive of the ongoing...
