In association with the International Commission of Jurists

North America

24 Mar

The excitement over the AQ7 ad put out by Liz Cheney's organization has died down, but Ben Wittes has this piece up in The New Republic extending the letter that he drafted, and to which I earlier linked, signed by a group of conservative and centrist folks criticizing it.  I was one of the signers, and wound up sticking up by own very lengthy comment about it over at Volokh.  I didn't link here at the time, as I thought the tone a little waspish for OJ, but with Ben's article in TNR, I'll change my mind and link to it (it's long and the title is "No Righteous Gentile Award, Please"). I suppose the key point for Ben and me, in somewhat different ways, is that we have each received much praise from folks on the left for defending Obama lawyers such as Neal Katyal or Jen Daskal.  No one objects to praise, or at least I don't, but much of it was a little misplaced.  The praise tended to be as though, in order to defend the Obama lawyers, we had somehow changed our minds about the Bush lawyers.  Whereas, for Ben and for me, each in somewhat different ways, the issue was the same.  We defended Katyal and Daskal because we had defended the Bush lawyers and thought the same principle applied.  I also followed up with an response to conservatives such as Andy McCarthy who attacked the Wittes letter; it too was fairly waspish in tone.  What with health care reform, and lots of other things on the agenda, the discussion is moving on, but it has been an important one, and at least among conservatives, a clarifying one. From the opening of Ben Wittes's essay:
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15 Mar

The general consensus among comments to my post last week on the previously-unacknowledged U.S.-Japanese security agreements was "no big deal."  These pacts reinforce an already well-developed practice of states doing deals--whether legally binding or political commitments--without U.N. registration or public disclosure.  Similarly, they reinforce existing views of Executive authority to conclude sole-executive agreements on defense-related matters for the United States.  So, if everyone's OK with such...

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11 Mar

It is always unpleasant to get lectured by foreign governments about "violating international law", but this is something U.S. government officials should be used to.  Still, it must be galling for the new U.S. administration to be lectured by Brazil's president over U.S. non-compliance with a WTO ruling on cotton subsidies. The United States must comply with a World Trade Organization...

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08 Mar

As I have noted earlier, there is a pitched battle between victims of Pan Am 73 terrorist hijacking over the distribution of treaty funds secured by the United States for American victims in a 2008 diplomatic settlement with Libya. The treaty and Executive Order stipulate that the money shall be distributed solely for the benefit of United States nationals,...

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06 Mar

That's a bit of an overstatement, but this review of Michael Byers' latest book: Who Owns the Arctic: Understanding Sovereignty Disputes in the North, reminds me of the surprising legal positions taken by Russia, Canada, and the United States over the legal status of the Northwest Passage. It is ironic that while Russia supports Canada's claim to the Northwest Passage, the...

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05 Mar

As Opinio Juris readers know, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on Wednesday in the case of Samantar v. Yousuf (briefs and transcript available here), which asks the Court to interpret the 1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. Commentators, including OJ’s own Julian Ku, have reported that the Justices seemed “unconvinced by all sides” (Julian’s words) and that none of the...

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28 Feb

My new Weekly Standard essay - although “polemic” is probably closer to it.  And thanks, Julian, for the plug below! Well, regular readers have been hearing about this piece for a while, and I have posted various arguments from it (concerning targeted killing and Predator drones and the CIA and armed conflict and self-defense, and my general concern that the...

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23 Feb

That's the question, sort of, raised in Totes-Isotoner v. United States, the most interesting tariff classification case you will ever read. Under the Harmonized Tariff Schedule, men's glove have a tariff rate of 14 percent whereas gloves "for other persons" have a rate of 12.6 percent. An importer of gloves, Totes-Isotoner, argues that these duties unconstitutionally discriminate on...

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