I’m wondering whether customary international law really exists anymore. No, I’m not talking about Posner and Goldsmith’s use of rational choice methodology to attack the normative value of customary international law; I’m not looking to quarrel with this blog’s namesake, opinio juris, or its effects on relations between states and other subjects of international law. Rather, my inquiry...
Following up on Julian's post, I think the problem is not fully appreciating the difficulty of justifying extraordinary renditions under international law, regardless of torture. Let's say someone is picked up and rendered to another country for interrogation. If we are not at war, then the full panoply of human rights law, including the ICCPR, to which we...
Fiona de Londras has just posted on SSRN an interesting article on gay rights under the European Convention on Human Rights. You can access the abstract and download the article here. The focus of the brief article is applying ECHR jurisprudence on privacy, family life, and marriage to the Irish context as it relates to gay rights. It...
The Council of Europe issued a blistering report today denouncing the U.S. and certain European countries for cooperating in a "reprehensible network" of detaining suspected terrorists in CIA-run secret prisons. I understand the legal arguments against renditions based on the Convention Against Torture. Plainly, countries cannot torture or send someone to a country that is likely to engage...
A French court in Toulose has held the French state and the state railway company SNCF liable for transporting a Holocaust victim to death camps near the end of the Second World War. As reported here, The tribunal in Toulouse ordered the state and the SNCF to pay a total of €62,000 (£43,000) to the family for their deceased father, and...
I'm not sure what I think about this, but international law commentators David Rivkin and Lee Casey have an article today in the Washington Post laying out the legal case for either Israel or the U.N. Security Council to attack or invade Iran. Here is the crux of their argument: . . .Ahmadinejad's rant [against Israel] features a direct...
Dan Kahan offered these remarks at Yale Commencement on the general topic of a Yale Law School education. In the course of those remarks he discussed two YLS alums, John Yoo and Jack Goldsmith. Comparing Yoo and Goldsmith he states, "...
Which is more important to globalization, technology or trade? In a recent McKinsey survey of business executives, (registration required) one of the questions was "What single factor contributes most to the accelerating pace of change in the global business environment today?" Of these eight factors, guess which ranked from most important to least important: Awareness and activism of consumersEase of...
One of the top candidates for the U.N. Secretary-General slot opening up later this year is Ban Ki-Moon, Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade. He spoke at some length last week in New York at the Council on Foreign Relations about his candidacy and his vision for the future of the United Nations. The transcript is of...
Is the "tide of sex workers" arriving in Germany in anticipation of the World Cup the result of human trafficking and sexual slavery or of legalized prostitution and free enterprise? Or maybe both? The U.S. State Department is concerned but some in Germany maintain that the increase in sex workers may be just market forces at work in a...
The most compelling, cutting-edge, honest legal writing being produced in this country today is happening on the Internet, and the crop improves daily. From the fistful of judges (including Richard Posner) who maintain regular blogs, to the vast and growing number of law professors and law students who find the time to post daily, it's clear that the real bones...
Michael Van Alstine has just posted on SSRN his most recent article to be published in the UCLA Law Review entitled Executive Aggrandizement in Foreign Affairs Lawmaking. Here is the abstract:This article analyzes the power of the President to create federal law on the foundation of the executive’s status as the constitutional representative of the United States in foreign...
