Because I so rarely get to blog about uplifting things, I wanted to pass along the following story, concerning a group of aboriginals who, in 1938 -- when so much of the world was silent -- protested the Nazis' treatment of the Jews during Kristallnacht: William Cooper’s name does not appear on Yad Vashem’s list of the Righteous Among the Nations,...
The Wall Street Journal had a news story yesterday, "Spain is Moving to Rein in Crusading Judges" (May 20, 2009), reporting on moves in the Spanish parliament to place stricter limits on the ability of investigating magistrates - most famously, Baltasar Garzon - to undertake sweeping investigations and indictments worldwide on the basis of universal jurisdiction: Under pressure from irate foreign...
Deniz Aydiner wins the honors for one of the dumbest murderers ever. He was indicted for aggravated murder in 2003 and while the investigation was pending he returned to Turkey. The state of Oregon subsequently indicted him and sought to impose the death penalty. But Aydiner missed his wife so much that he just had to return...
Jack Goldsmith has a new essay out in The New Republic, "The Cheney Fallacy," comparing the basic elements of the Obama and Bush national security and counterterrorism policies. It walks through eleven core features of the national security-counterterrorism apparatus, from Guantanamo to targeted killing to interrogation, etc., and compares the two administrations. Certainly I think this is the right basic...
Pre-Trial Chamber I of the ICC has summoned Bahar Idriss Abu Garda, a Darfuri rebel leader, to appear before the court to face war crimes charges: Abu Garda, member of the Zaghawa tribe of Sudan, is charged with three war crimes allegedly committed during an attack carried out on 29 September 2007 against the African Union Mission in Sudan (“AMIS”), a...
I'm not sure I entirely agree with Kevin's last post re the Wall Street Journal, but I'm going to let that go in favor of taking up another issue that comes from an earlier WSJ editorial, Pelosi's Self-Torture. (WSJ, editorial, May 15, 2009.) In the middle of that editorial (with which I otherwise largely agree), the Journal notes that Pelosi...
I spent the past two days at an excellent conference organized by Ben Wittes - we discussed his book Law and the Long War (which I see you can get for the bargain price of $6.99 on Amazon) here at OJ when it came out - on ways in which Congress should legislate the future of US counterterrorism. It was...
With a few obvious exceptions, I try to avoid directly criticizing scholars with whom I disagree. But I feel compelled to say a few words about a recent Jurist editorial in which a professor, a former Army JAG (a group for whom I have the utmost respect), argues that waterboarding is not torture. (It also argues that a CIA interrogator...
Last week, I blogged about my recent symposium contribution, examining what role the Executive plays in U.S. state agreements with foreign governments, whether national or sub-national in character. Since then, I've posted a much bigger piece that's forthcoming in the Texas Law Review -- Unpacking the Compact Clause (you can download it here). Building on my earlier work, this article examines actual...
I've just posted a piece I did for Peggy's (great) Missouri v. Holland conference last year, entitled The Elusive Foreign Compact. Granted I'm weeks (if not months) behind other participants in getting my contribution posted (see, e.g., here and here). Hopefully, however, this is a case of better late than never. For those who might be interested, here's the abstract: This symposium essay identifies...
It has gone all but unnoticed in the U.S. but Russia has declared victory in its fight against Chechen rebels. Chechnya had become a byword for a place of chaos and random violence perpetrated by all sides, especially since the first Chechen War of 1994-1996. But a recent report by the Times of London concerning Russian black operations in the...
William Ranney Levi's paper on interrogation techniques, Interrogation's Law, is forthcoming in Yale Law Journal, but is up at SSRN. Here is the abstract: Conventional wisdom states that recent U.S. authorization of coercive interrogation techniques, and the legal decisions that sanctioned them, constitute a dramatic break with the past. This is false. U.S. interrogation policy well prior to 9/11 has allowed...
