UN Human Rights Chief Navi Pillay has argued that US drone strikes in Pakistan raises legal questions. China has promised "sincere and selfless" help to Afghanistan, committing to increasing aid, investment and security cooperation. In other news about China, it has also introduced new legislation to restrict internet use. Sudan and South Sudan have called off their peace talks with no deal in sight. Sudanese...
[Beth Karlin is the Program Director of the Transformational Media Lab within the Center for Unconventional Security Affairs (CUSA) as well as a Research Associate at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) and a doctoral student in the School of Social Ecology at University of California, Irvine. Her research focuses on the potential and application of new media and technologies for civic...
If you happen to be around Charlottesville tomorrow, Friday, February 10, you might want to come over to a symposium on how to resolve conflicting legal norms in US and foreign courts: The conference – organized by the student-run Virginia Journal of International Law and the John Bassett Moore Society of International Law – will explore how to resolve conflicting legal norms...
My bad for not mentioning this some time ago, but tomorrow, Thursday, 12 noon, we at Washington College of Law, American University, will have Michael Leiter, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, as keynote speaker. He will be followed by a panel that will include myself and my colleague Steve Vladeck — but more important than either Steve or...
A busy week of grading prevented me from addressing Ken's May 6 post on battlefield geography along with the May 6 news that the US conducted a drone attack in Yemen any sooner, but there should be an important take away on the boundaries of the battlefield from the bin Laden operation. An often heard complaint about the US conduct of...
I hope readers have been following the backlash against CUNY's Board of Trustees for its cowardly decision not to award Tony Kushner an honorary degree from John Jay college because one trustee -- with no notice, and giving Kushner no opportunity to respond -- lied about his political beliefs and accused him of being "anti-Israel." Here is a bit of...
I have my podcast debut this week over at Surprisingly Free -- "a weekly podcast featuring in-depth discussions with an eclectic mix of authors, academics, and entrepreneurs at the intersection of technology, policy, and economics." I talk about my forthcoming article, An e-SOS for Cyberspace, with Surprisingly Free's host, Jerry Brito. Click here for a listen....
The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 is perhaps the most important example of the U.S. Congress exercising its power to implement and interpret international law principles as part of domestic law. It is a basic and foundational statute implicating almost all kinds of international litigation in the U.S. And it is a statute which the Supreme Court (and lower...
I rarely listen to podcasts, but this podcast by Ann Althouse is definitely worth ten or fifteen minutes of your time. The first half discusses the irony of Judge Taylor’s decision requiring respect for the rule of law. Althouse says of Judge Taylor, “How dare you criticize the President for abusing power when you are blind to your...
One of the new and exciting developments in technology is podcasting. So far the use of podcasting on academic blogs is in its infancy. Very few law blogs (Ann Althouse is an exception) include podcasting as part of their content. Significantly, the Council on Foreign Relations has just started a library of podcasting available here. ...
Rebecca MacKinnon at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society and regular blogger at RConversation, is doing some fascinating work on promoting and cataloguing the use of global blogging to provide an alternative means of information in repressive regimes. She calls it "bridge blogging." If the government controls the media in a particular country such as China or...
Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez gave an important speech at the University of Chicago Law School yesterday strongly criticizing the recent trend of reliance on foreign and international authority. Gonzales made several key points:1. Sometimes reliance on international law is appropriate. "Judges and lawyers routinely use international law in other contexts. For instance, judges and lawyers seeking to interpret our...
