This is a follow-up to my previous post concerning the legal issues of the conflict in Georgia with some more about the current military and diplomatic situations (and the resultant legal concerns). The fighting is moving beyond South Ossetia and into other parts of Georgia, such as the port city of Poti. According to the New York Times: Mr. Bush referred particularly to...
Russia's intervention in Georgia is the latest, and most obvious, example of the peculiar role that Russia plays in the various so-called frozen conflicts in former republics of the USSR. As international security expert Dov Lynch has put it, Russia can be thought of as a “mediator-cum-supporter-cum-combatant.” Why has Russia undertaken such a foreign policy in Georgia and what, if anything,...
The frozen conflict over the Georgian separatist region South Ossetia has become a shooting war. On the first day of the Olympics, no less. According to CNN: "All day today, they've been bombing Georgia from numerous warplanes and specifically targeting (the) civilian population, and we have scores of wounded and dead among (the) civilian population all around the country," President Mikhail...
I have had the distinct pleasure of spending my spring and summer as a visiting scholar at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. SAIS offers a program of studies in international law and organizations (something only a handful of other public policy/political science graduate programs in the the U.S. can boast about), with a full range of courses in public international law and...
[caption id="attachment_4216" align="alignleft" width="300" caption=""][/caption]Opinio Juris is pleased to announce a panel of international sports law experts as guest bloggers during the Beijing Olympics. Throughout the Olympic Games they will discuss international sports law and provide expert commentary on any Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) arbitrations that take place. Matt Mitten, Maidie Oliveau and Antonio Rigozzi are...
Salim Hamdan has been sentenced to 66 months in prison, far short of the 30 years-to-life sentence the prosecution requested. Good news for Hamdan? Probably not, as Colonel Morris Davis -- the third chief prosecutor of the military commissions, who resigned because of political interference by the Pentagon -- pointed out in the comments to my ex post facto post: The...
As Marty points out in his post, whether convicting Hamdan of "material support for terrorism" (MST) violates the Ex Post Facto Clause will be a major issue in Hamdan's appeal. Having now read Judge Allred's decision carefully, I strongly disagree with his conclusion that it does not. Judge Allred's framing of the ex post facto issue (p. 3) is unobjectionable: "the...
The State of Texas carried out its execution of Jose Ernesto Medellin late Tuesday night. It did so following the Supreme Court's denial of a stay, 5-4. The split is unsurprising, with the majority focused (accurately I suspect) on the fact that a legislative fix was unlikely, and reading DOJ's silence on the stay request as consistent with a larger...
That, in essence, is the surprising argument that the Coast Guard raised in a recent administrative law decision involving regulation of shipping traffic to protect an endangered species. In Defenders of Wildlife v. Gutierrez, the D.C. Circuit was presented with the question of whether Coast Guard action implementing "traffic separation schemes" constituted "final agency action" within the meaning of...
Greg Fox of Wayne State University Law School has posted a new article on SSRN that examines the proposed US/Iraq Status of Forces Agreement (SoFA) from a unique angle. Discussions in U.S. academic journals and blogs have tended to focus on the constitutionality under U.S. law of the Administration pursuing the completion of a long-term security arrangement with Iraq under...
Before heading to Bethlehem I spent an hour in the Old City of Jerusalem drinking Turkish coffee at the entrance to the Dome of the Rock as I watched thousands of devout Muslims pour in for afternoon prayers, sajjada in hand. I then exited the Muslim quarter through the Damascus Gate and caught sherut 124 to the security checkpoint....
Last week, reflecting on the effusive welcome he received in Germany, Obama said the following to a group of House Democrats: It has become increasingly clear in my travel, the campaign, that the crowds, the enthusiasm, 200,000 people in Berlin, is not about me at all. It's about America. I have just become a symbol of the possibility of America returning...
