In association with the International Commission of Jurists

North America

22 Jun

That’s a remarkable statement, but it actually is true. Yesterday the Supreme Court in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project addressed the question of whether a federal statute criminalizing the provision of “material support” to terrorist organizations was constitutional. A humanitarian NGO group wanted to train members of two terrorist organizations, the PKK and the LTTE, to become more...

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04 Jun

[Peter "Bo" Rutledge is Associate Professor of Law at the University of Georgia Law School and the author, with Gary Born, of International Civil Litigation in United States Courts] I’ve been thinking a lot about Samantar since its release as I expect it’ll occupy an important place in the next edition of Gary’s and my International Civil Litigation (we’re working on...

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02 Jun

The most interesting aspect of the Samantar v. Yousuf opinion yesterday was the final section addressing the "artful pleading" problem. The Court stated that "[e]ven if a suit is not governed by the [FSIA], it may still be barred by foreign sovereign immunity under the common law. And not every suit can successfully be pleaded against an individual...

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02 Jun

I know that will sound like a provocative question, but it's not meant to be.  According to the Jerusalem Post, Israel justifies its interdiction of the "Freedom Flotilla" by reference to Article 67(a) of the San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable to Armed Conflict at Sea, which permits the attack of neutral merchant vessels that "are believed on reasonable...

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15 May

Ken has already flagged the editorial, in which Schuck -- a superb scholar who teaches at Yale -- argues that it would be constitutionally permissible to strip Faisal Shahzad's US citizenship because of his attempt to set off a car-bomb in Times Square.  I'm skeptical of Schuck's argument, so I thought I'd explain why.  Here are the key paragraphs: Revoking the...

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11 May

In 1995, while Elena Kagan was an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, she wrote a review about Stephen Carter’s book, The Confirmation Mess. Carter’s book, of course, was highly critical of the confirmation process and identified numerous ailments, including most famously, the handling of the confirmation hearing of Robert Bork. Kagan begs to differ....

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07 May

Yesterday a federal court in New York granted Chevron's request for discovery of outtakes from the 2009 documentary Crude about the multi-billion dollar litigation in Ecuador. Chevron's request was pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 1782, which authorizes a judge in the United States to order discovery of evidence to be used in proceedings before a foreign tribunal. As reported here, Chevron's...

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07 May

That is what Mike Allen is reporting at Politico.  If he's right, our next Supreme Court Justice will likely be the woman who recently argued this (h/t: my friend Steve Vladeck): [W]ith regard to the material support statute, there are substantial (pending) issues with regard to its scope, given that the Ninth Circuit invalidated the "service," "training," and "expert...

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03 May

Julian entitled a post last week "The ICC Begins to Fade in Importance in Sudan."  Julian might want to have a talk with Bashir about that: On the international summit circuit, no one can clear a room more quickly than Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir. Leaders have maneuvered to stay out of photographs with him, dashed ...

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08 Apr

Putting aside events in Kyrgyzstan (which certainly bear close watching), the day's big news for international lawyers was President Obama and Russian President Dmitri A. Medvedev signing two related international agreements on the reduction of nuclear armaments. The State Department has posted the originals of this new START treaty here (see here for the longer, more detailed Protocol to that...

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