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[Larry Catá Backer is W. Richard and Mary Eshelman Faculty Scholar Professor of Law and International Affairs at Penn State Law.] On December 17, 2014, the Presidents of the United States of America and of the Republic of Cuba announced an intention to move toward the normalization of relations between their countries. The two statements reflected the quite distinct conceptual frameworks from...

Christopher Kutz, Professor of Law in the Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program at Berkeley Law School, has a fascinating new essay examining the possibility that "norms" against torture and assassination have died in the United States in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.  Kutz is not writing to support the CIA interrogation program or the US government's use of assassination, but he...

I am very rarely shocked, but that was my response to yesterday's editorial in the New York Times by Anthony Romero -- the Executive Director of the ACLU -- arguing that Obama should pre-emptively pardon all of the high-ranking officials responsible for the Bush administration's systematic torture regime at Guantanamo Bay, Bagram, Abu Ghraib, various Eastern European black sites, etc. Here is a...

As a number of commentators have recently noted, the latest report on the OTP's preliminary-examination activities indicates that the OTP is specifically considering whether US forces are responsible for war crimes relating to detainee treatment in Afghanistan -- something it only hinted at in its 2013 report. Here are the relevant statements (pp. 22-23): 94. The Office has been assessing available information relating to...

[Gabor Rona is a Visiting Professor of Law and Director, Law and Armed Conflict Project at Cardozo Law School.] Over at Lawfare Jack Goldsmith provides a somewhat more nuanced analysis of President Obama’s executive action on immigration than the inflammatory rhetoric flowing from some quarters, see here, here, and here. Jack nowhere uses the words “impeachment” (except to say that it...