The Wikileaks episode seems to be turning to the USG's advantage, at least domestically: it's provoking a lot of sympathy for the government as an entity. That's a rare sentiment these days. Leave aside angry calls for Assange's head (almost literally), people are actually feeling sorry for the USG. One way that's being expressed is to compare the government to private...
I suspect this will be a much bigger story than the previous Iraq and Afghanistan disclosures, mostly because there will be something here for everyone. I'm not sure that the State Department looks particularly bad, as Timothy Garten Ash explains. It shouldn't be a revelation to anyone that diplomats sometimes do something that looks like spying. This is much more...
I am grateful to Professor Van Schaack for her thoughtful and considered response. It strikes me as an entirely fair criticism that – albeit in a short commentary focusing on the standards governing the use of force by governments – I neglected to explore fully issues of combatant status in non-international armed conflicts and, more interestingly, belligerent nexus issues. The...
[Beth Van Schaack is an Associate Professor at Santa Clara University School of Law and contributor to IntLawGrrls.] Professor Guilfoyle’s article makes a discrete and important contribution to his growing body of work on maritime law and the problem of piracy in the Gulf of Aden. The article cogently argues that international humanitarian law (‘IHL’) does not apply to most instances...
[Dr Douglas Guilfoyle is a Lecturer in Law at the Faculty of Laws, University College London.] It is sometimes suggested that because pirates were described by classical authors as hostes humani generis (enemies of humankind) or because the Security Council has authorised the use of ‘necessary means’ in repressing Somali piracy that the laws of armed conflict ('LOAC') must (or might)...
So thinks James P. Rubin in an Op-Ed in today's NY Times. His argument comes in two parts. First, a minority of the Senate plays an obstructionist role, which means that the United States simply doesn't join important treaties: For much of the world, treaty ratification is a simple matter. In parliamentary systems like those in Britain and France, ratification is virtually automatic,...
I don't have time to respond to the Ghailani verdict, which Julian notes below. I would simply direct readers to Ben Wittes' superb post at Lawfare, in which he criticizes those who view the verdict as a vindication of the military commissions. Here's a snippet: Second, it really is not clear that prosecutors would have fared better in a military...
This is a wild tale of self-execution (which, I'm fairly sure, is the first time anyone has used the adjective "wild" to describe the self-execution concept). For years, the Bush Administration sought to get the U.S. Congress to amend the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) to ease licensing restrictions on arms exports to two of the United States' closest allies -- the...
A couple of weeks ago, New Stream Dream accused me of never believing individuals who -- like Khadr and Lynne Stewart -- confess to committing crimes. Well, I believe this confession: In his book, titled "Decision Points," Bush recounts being asked by the CIA whether it could proceed with waterboarding Mohammed, who Bush said was suspected of knowing about...
The following is a guest post by David Glazier, an Associate Professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. As Opinio Juris readers likely recall, there are two ongoing federal prosecutions in Norfolk, Virginia before different judges of Somali pirates who made the boneheaded mistakes of attempting attacks on two separate U.S. Navy warships. (Hey, it was dark!) In the first...
At least the war criminal lost: The basic facts are undisputed: on 15 April 2004 Ilario Pantano, then a second lieutenant with the US marines, stopped and detained two Iraqi men in a car near Falluja. The Iraqis were unarmed and the car found to be empty of weapons. Pantano ordered the two men to search the car...
I have bumped Dave's comment to the main page, because it's worth a read -- and not just because it supports my claim that Khadr will serve no more than two years in a Canadian prison...
