Regions

His name?  John Ashcroft.  Yep, that John Ashcroft: The consortium in charge of restructuring the world’s most infamous private-security firm just added a new chief in charge of keeping the company on the straight and narrow. Yes, John Ashcroft, the former U.S. attorney general, is now an “independent director” of Xe Services, formerly known as Blackwater. Ashcroft will...

[Mary Ellen O’Connell is the Robert and Marion Short Chair in Law and Research Professor of International Dispute Resolution—Kroc Institute. She is a Vice President at the American Society of International Law and the author of author of The Choice of Law Against Terrorism, 4 J. NAT. SEC. L. & POL’Y 2010] In his speech announcing the death of Osama...

The best lines in President Obama’s speech last night were at the beginning: It was nearly 10 years ago that a bright September day was darkened by the worst attack on the American people in our history. The images of 9/11 are seared into our national memory -- hijacked planes cutting through a cloudless September sky; the Twin Towers collapsing to...

The media is reporting that the Obama administration is handling Usama bin Laden's remains in accordance with Islamic principles.  That decision is a stark reminder of why we are so fortunate that a Republican is no longer President.  When the Bush administration killed Uday and Qusay Hussein, recall, it infuriated Muslims and at least arguably violated the First Additional Protocol...

Let me first thank Peter and the other members of Opinio Juris for providing this space for an online discussion of my new book.  Let me also thank Ken, Francesca, and Fernanda for taking the time to offer comments.  I am really looking forward to this exchange. As its title suggests, Power and Legitimacy grapples with what I see...

That question is raised by the ICC's investigation of the post-election violence in Kenya, which included a number of forcible circumcisions of Luo men.  According to IRIN Africa, although the OPT originally alleged that the forcible circumcision qualified as the crime against humanity "other form of sexual violence" under Article 7(1)(g) of the Rome Statute, the Pre-Trial Chamber reclassified the...

Publicly, Israel has been nothing but critical of the Goldstone Report.  Netanyahu responded to Goldstone's recent partial retraction, for example, by calling for the "twisted and nonfactual" Report to be thrown "into the dustbin of history." Behind the scenes, however, Israel has taken a different approach.  According to the Jewish Press, the Report has led the IDF to adopt some very...