As a judge in the New York federal courts over the past 15 years, both at the district and appellate level, U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has had a fair number of cases involving the application of international law. She has never ruled on an Alien Tort Statute case, but my very quick scan suggests that, whatever else her...
Now that she has the Jeff Rosen seal of approval, the safe money is on Diane Wood to fill David Souter's seat on the Supreme Court. Most of us IL types will know that Judge Wood has some strong interests in the area (she has been on the board of editors of the AJIL), but in my case at least it's...
I am obviously on record as supporting the criminal prosecution of the individuals involved in the CIA's torture regime -- the interrogators who inflicted it, the military and government officials who ordered it, the OLC lawyers who rationalized it. Such prosecutions are, unfortunately, extremely unlikely -- at least in the United States. Moreover, there does not seem to be any...
I was intrigued by Julian's post on Andrew McCarthy's latest screed for National Review Online, so I read what McCarthy had to say. His argument boils down to this: (1) the Obama administration argues in Demjanjuk that torture is a specific-intent crime; (2) Yoo and Bybee argued in the infamous OLC memos that torture is a specific-intent crime; (3) the...
The "beautiful game" is what Pele calls soccer (yes, I know, "football" to the rest of the world besides the US). On April 25th, diplomats from the UN, including the Secretary-General, set aside the great game of diplomacy to play a game of soccer at New York's Chelsea Piers to support the non-governmental organization Play31. Play31's website explains that: Play31 was...
It has gone all but unnoticed in the U.S. but Russia has declared victory in its fight against Chechen rebels. Chechnya had become a byword for a place of chaos and random violence perpetrated by all sides, especially since the first Chechen War of 1994-1996. But a recent report by the Times of London concerning Russian black operations in the...
So I'm not exactly surprised that Obama is planning to revive the use of military commissions to try terror suspects, (according to the NYT). The Obama administration is moving toward reviving the military commission system for prosecuting Guantánamo detainees, which was a target of critics during the Bush administration, including Mr. Obama himself. No doubt there will be some amendment to the Bush commissions,...
For a while there, it looked as if there might be a real fight over Harold Koh's nomination as State Department Legal Adviser. The Republicans have been casting about for a nomination that they could defeat on some issue of principle (that is, over something not involving a nominee's tax returns), along the lines of Lani Guinier's failed nomination...
The Eleventh Circuit earlier this month ruled that Manuel Noriega could be extradited to France following the completion of his sentence in Florida. In Noriega v. Pastrana, Noriega argued that under the Third Geneva Convention he was entitled to automatic and immediate repatriation to Panama as soon as his criminal sentence was complete. However, Section 5 of the...
Maybe. In any event, Harold Koh's testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will be webcast live starting around 2:15 (thanks to Mark Shulman for the tip). I predict a very boring hearing where nothing of substance will be asked, and nothing of substance will be offered as an answer either. This should work to Koh's benefit, of course. Boring...
Dave Kopel has a post today at The Volokh Conspiracy in which he dusts off John Yoo's argument in the infamous 14 March 2003 memo that a CIA interrogator prosecuted for torture would be able to invoke the defenses of necessity and self-defense. I am not interested in responding to Kopel's post, which grossly mischaracterizes my position on torture prosecutions...
State Department Legal Adviser nominee Harold Koh's written answers to pre-hearing questions asked by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have been posted online at Senator Lugar's site. The Q&A goes for over 60 pages. I have only skimmed it and so, for now, I will simply point out questions/answers that may be of particular interest to Opinio Juris readers (and of course, I...
