In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Regions

24 Oct

Back in July, I noted this story out of the Philippines, which alleged that a justice of the Philippines Supreme Court had plagiarized (and distorted) an article by Evan Criddle and Evan Fox-Descent in the Yale Journal of International Law (and featured here at Opinio Juris). (see the comment under the original post for a comment by Professor Criddle). Well, things...

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22 Oct

On Thursday night I had the privilege of participating in a live webinar on targeted killing and Al-Aulaqi held by the Harvard Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research.  The other participants included Yale's Andrew March, Emory's Laurie Blank, and Seton Hall's Jonathan Hafetz.  It was a wonderful, wide-ranging discussion, one that focused not only on the international-law aspects of...

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12 Oct

If passed, the House bill, "Currency Reform for Fair Trade Act" (H.R. 2378) has all the markings of a major trade battle before the WTO. At bottom, the law requires the United States administrative agencies to treat currency manipulation as a subsidy that would be subject to countervailing duties equal to the benefit to exporters conferred by the manipulation. The...

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11 Oct

[John Dehn is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Law at the United States Military Academy. The views expressed in this post are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of Defense, U.S. Army, U.S. Military Academy, or any other department or agency of the U.S. government] I agree with Kevin that not every wartime decision...

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08 Oct

Today's announcement that Chinese political dissident Liu Xiaobo has won the Nobel Peace Prize is welcome news. The award is consistent with a longstanding tradition of the Nobel Peace Prize to honor political dissidents. In announcing the prize, the Nobel Committee stated that "The campaign to establish universal human rights also in China is being waged by many...

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03 Oct

Obama apologized on Friday for experiments conducted in Guatemala between 1946 and 1948 in which American scientists deliberately infected prison inmates, prostitutes, and mental patients with syphilis without their consent.  The apology is a striking reminder that the Nazis were not the only ones that conducted horrific, non-consensual medical experiments on human subjects in the first half of the 20th...

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25 Sep

Bobby Chesney has graciously responded at Lawfare to my post about detention in non-international armed confilct (NIAC). Unfortunately, I think Chesney's response not only misconstrues what Steve Vladeck and I have been arguing, but also demonstrates some important misconceptions about IHL. To begin with, we need to understand exactly what we are arguing about. As Steve pointed out in one of...

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16 Sep

Ben Wittes has a post at Lawfare today discussing ways in which the Obama administration might be able to avoid litigating the ACLU/CCR lawsuit challenging Al-Aulaqi's targeting.  One of his preferred responses is the "political question" doctrine; in his view, "enemy targeting" is a classic example of a political question with which the judiciary should not interfere. I would not be...

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13 Sep

Gerald Steinberg, the head of right-wing propaganda outlet NGO Monitor, is not happy about George Soros' recent $100 million gift to Human Rights Watch: In accepting a huge grant from George Soros, Human Rights Watch has spurned the public advice (and warning) offered nearly a year ago by its founder Robert Bernstein. Rather than grapple with the serious...

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12 Sep

Something that our European readers have already probably heard as it is one of the most viewed stories on the BBC website (but not so much here in the U.S.), the Basque separatist terrorist organization ETA has renounced (at least for now) the use of violence:  Armed Basque separatist group Eta says it will not carry out "armed actions" in its campaign for...

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