In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Featured

07 Jul

As widely reported, in Moscow yesterday President Obama and Russian President Medvedev signed a Joint Understanding for the Start Follow-on Treaty. Here's how the White House fact sheet describes it: On April 1, Presidents Obama and Medvedev agreed in London that America and Russian negotiators would begin work on a new, comprehensive, legally binding agreement on reducing and limiting strategic offensive...

|
30 Jun

With the Supreme Court term now complete, I thought it would be useful to give a brief year-end review of the Court's decisions. The Supreme Court produced no blockbuster cases this year on any subject related to our discipline. It was truly a sleeper year. There were three cases addressing immunity; two cases addressing asylum, one case...

|
30 Jun

Cross-posted at Balkinization Various developments on the resolution-of-Gitmo front to discuss. First a quick note on a recent signing statement. Then on to rumors of a contemplated executive order on detention issues. The war spending bill I recently mentioned barring the president from bringing any current Gitmo detainees to the United States was signed into law by the President...

|
29 Jun

Most Court-watchers spent the day examining the Ricci case (a.k.a. the New Haven Firefighters' case), given its racial dimensions and the fact that Judge Sotomayor participated in the Second Circuit opinion that the Court overturned.  I, however, was more interested to see that the Court granted certiorari today in another Sotomayor-related case, Abbott v. Abbott.  This is the Fifth Circuit case I mentioned...

|
28 Jun

The New York Times (along with much of the mainstream media) has "rediscovered" cyberwar of late (see here, here, here, and here).  Today's story revives longstanding differences between Russian government proposals to regulate cyberwarfare by treaty versus existing U.S. preferences to place the issue in more informal law enforcement cooperation networks: Russia favors an international treaty along the lines of those negotiated for...

|
28 Jun

Moises Naim of Foreign Policy has an essay in the new issue called "Minilateralism: The magic number to get real international action." His piece has spawned reactions from the bloggers at FP.com. Naim's essay is the latest volley in a debate on "big" or "small" multilateral action should be; however, although he and other bloggers do a good job setting out the...

|
27 Jun

A quick update on the OTP's efforts to include genocide charges in Bashir's arrest warrant.  Pre-Trial Chamber I has now granted leave to appeal the issue I've discussed before -- whether it misunderstood Article 58's "reasonable grounds" requirement when it rejected the genocide charges. It's a very defensive decision, almost certainly written by Judge Steiner, who is the only holdover from...

|
19 Jun

As most people probably know by now, the Washington Post, completely overburdened by liberals like Charles Krauthammer, Bill Kristol, George Will, Jim Hoagland, Michael Gerson, Robert Kagan, Fred Hiatt, David Broder, Richard Cohen, John Bolton, Joe Lieberman, and Douglas Feith, has fired Dan Froomkin, author of the wonderful blog White House Watch.  Froomkin has yet to say anything about his firing, other than that...

|
15 Jun

We're delighted to have Professor Amos Guiora join us this week as a guest blogger at Opinio Juris, where he'll be discussing what lessons U.S. lawyers and policymakers might draw from the Israeli experience in administrative security detention. As many regular OJ'ers know, Professor Guiora is an expert on comparative counterterrorism law and has published extensively both in the United...

|
12 Jun

[Nigel Purvis is the President of Climate Advisers] Climate change presents a clear and growth threat to the United States and the world.  America now has an important opportunity to lead.  Congress is moving toward enacting comprehensive climate legislation.  The House Energy and Commerce committee recently approved a “cap-and-trade” bill (Waxman-Markey) that would reduce U.S. emissions 17% below 2005 levels by...

|
11 Jun

[Mark Tushnet is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Harvard Law School] The argument for “The Inevitable Globalization of Constitutional Law” identifies two general processes – top-down and bottom-up – pushing toward convergence of basic constitutional principles in a rather large number of jurisdictions, those that participate in world-wide markets requiring significant cross-border flows of investment and human capital.  We...

|