Dave Kopel has a post today at The Volokh Conspiracy in which he dusts off John Yoo's argument in the infamous 14 March 2003 memo that a CIA interrogator prosecuted for torture would be able to invoke the defenses of necessity and self-defense. I am not interested in responding to Kopel's post, which grossly mischaracterizes my position on torture prosecutions...
The National Court has reassigned the case from Judge Garzon to Judge Eloy Velasco. CNN says that "Judge Velasco is thought to have little, if any, experience in these kinds of cases." Apparently, CNN has never heard of The Google, because it took me about 30 seconds to learn that, in January, Judge Velasco relied on Spain's universal jurisdiction law...
Despite his checkered past, I'm beginning to like Jacob Zuma, who is set to become the next President of South Africa, more and more: The Sudanese president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir will not be invited to the inauguration ceremony of the South African president-elect Jacob Zuma, according to news reports. The ruling African National Congress (ANC) headed by Zuma has an absolute majority...
State Department Legal Adviser nominee Harold Koh's written answers to pre-hearing questions asked by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have been posted online at Senator Lugar's site. The Q&A goes for over 60 pages. I have only skimmed it and so, for now, I will simply point out questions/answers that may be of particular interest to Opinio Juris readers (and of course, I...
And proves he is neither very funny nor even remotely interested in anything resembling intelligent debate: Hypothesize that the Obama administration, or perhaps foreign/international courts, prosecute and convict various officials of the Bush administration. Further assume that the new President who takes office in 2013 or 2017 has promised "I will ensure that the crimes of the previous administration are vigorously...
Harold Koh, who is moderating the last Reisman panel on human rights, asks the panel about the legal status of human rights committees like the CEDAW committee, obliquely referring to a controversy over the legal status of such committees' interpretive authority. Hmm...
Scholars who believe that the individuals who wrote the OLC memos authorizing torture should be criminally prosecuted -- as I do -- normally cite the Justice Case, decided by the Nuremberg Military Tribunal (NMT) in 1947, for the proposition that a government lawyer can be held criminally responsible for giving erroneous legal advice to his political superiors. Last year, I...
TNR discusses here the circumstances of last Friday's intervention by Palestinian doctor Ashraf El Hagog as a representative of UN Watch. The Chair of the then-Prep Com, who has since been elected chair of the Durban II conference, is Najjat al-Hajjaji, representing the government of Libya. Readers might recall that Hagog, along with a group of Bulgarian nurses was...
Yeah, this is much better: On Sunday, Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said on the ABC News program “This Week” that “those who devised policy” also “should not be prosecuted.” But administration officials said Monday that Mr. Emanuel had meant the officials who ordered the policies carried out, not the lawyers who provided the legal rationale. I'm dubious that...
Eric Posner picks up on Marko Milanovic's very interesting comments in response to my question below about the views of non American international lawyers of the ATS. I'm going to pull up interesting responses to my question into this separate post - currently from Marko, Francisco Forrest Martin, and I'll update if others add things to the bottom of the...
Still holding out hope that the Obama administration will prosecute the architects of the torture regime? Stop: The Obama administration opposes any effort to prosecute those in the Justice Department who drafted legal memos authorizing harsh interrogations at secret CIA prisons, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said yesterday. Some analysts and lawmakers have called for investigations and possible prosecution of...
Words of wisdom from Tommy Crocker at The Faculty Lounge: Comments today by Gen. Michael Hayden make clear a further reason why the Obama Administration should name a special prosecutor to investigate potential war crimes in light of everything we know, and have recently learned, about CIA interrogations of "high value al Qaeda detainees." Gen. Hayden has played a vocal role...
