Plaintiffs will apparently appeal yesterday's jury verdict in the Chevron ATS case. In the meantime, as we contemplate a new Administration, it's worth considering, how, if at all, USG views will shift with respect to litigation under the Alien Tort Claims Act (a.k.a. the Alien Tort Statute (ATS)). Although he offered his views in full advocacy mode for...
Last month the Supreme Court rendered its latest installment on the issue of judicial supervision of national security. Winter v. NRDC has received surprisingly little attention, but it strikes me as an important example of judicial deference to the Executive Branch in military affairs. This language in particular is noteworthy: We “give great deference to the professional judgment of...
Peter Raven-Hansen has a review of Jack Goldsmith's The Terror Presidency in the latest American Journal of International Law which includes some thoughts on law professors as top government lawyers. His basic line, with John Yoo as the example: better not to use a perch in the government to validate your academic theories. But in this fact lies a risk for...
Violence in Kenya following the disputed 2007 elections left more than 1,300 people dead and more than 500,000 internally displaced. Last month, Kenya's Commission of Inquiry into Post-Election Violence released a 527-page report -- the Waki Report -- that concluded much of the violence was planned and organized by members of Kenya's security agencies, business leaders, politicians, and government officials. ...
While the attention of the international news is fixed on the Mumbai attacks, I just want to pause to note that there is a growing tide of sectarian violence in Nigeria, which has claimed another 300 lives in the past few days. The strife in Nigeria provides a window into the types of complex ongoing conflicts that combine ethnic tensions,...
(Professor Martin Scheinin, whose mission and report on the US and counterterrorism and human rights I discussed below, was kind enough to post a substantive response to my earlier post, "Try or Release." Particularly since I was quite critical of that report, let me move Professor's Scheinin's response up to its own post. Apologies for not noticing it earlier -...
That's the interesting argument raised in this cert. petition in Abbott v. Abbott. Although certiorari is warranted based solely on the conflict among the federal courts of appeals, certiorari also should be granted because the Fifth Circuit’s holding conflicts with the interpretation overwhelmingly adopted by the foreign courts that have addressed this issue. In construing the terms of a...
Thanks Ken. Let me try to clarify again. On one level, you’re quite right: many human rights advocates believe a new system of administrative detention – beyond the criminal law and beyond the Geneva regime – is not a good idea as a matter of policy. (I hasten to add many who are not human rights advocates think...
In the Wall Street Journal editorial Ken mentions below, Goldsmith and Posner argue -- in defense of their thesis that Europeans ignore international law if it is not in their interest to obey it -- that "when nations led by Europe created the International Criminal Court (ICC), they purported to limit the Security Council's power to delay or halt ICC...
The Yale Journal of International Law (YJIL), one of the world’s leading journals of international and comparative law, is pleased to continue its partnership with Opinio Juris in this second online symposium. This week, we will be featuring two Articles published by YJIL in Vol. 33-2, both of which are available here. Thank you to Peggy McGuinness and the other...
The Institute for War & Peace Reporting has an interesting report today on the Ugandan government's efforts to prosecute Kony and other LRA members in a special domestic court. According to the IWPR's report, the problem is not the lack of political will, but the potential retroactivity of the legislation necessary to make the Rome Statute's core crimes -- war...
The power of international law comes from our belief in it and the purposes it serves: the promotion of peace, human rights, prosperity and the natural environment. Beth Simmons in her thoughtful and well-written post suggests that we need empirical evidence of this belief. There is, however, plenty of evidence—indeed, the evidence is overwhelming, if not categorized and precisely quantified. We...
