Last October, Col. Morris Davis resigned as chief prosecutor of the military commissions, claiming that Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann had interfered with the prosecutor's office, pressured him to use classified evidence -- requiring sessions to be conducted behind closed doors -- and encouraged the use of evidence obtained through waterboarding. Col. Davis filed a formal complaint at the time, but...
Our friend John Boonstra at UN Dispatch calls attention to a little-used provision of the UN Charter that requires members of the Security Council to abstain from voting on substantive matters when they are a party to a dispute. Here is the text of Article 27(3): Decisions of the Security Council on all other matters shall be made by an affirmative...
According to Interfax, Russia is considering referring the situation in South Ossetia to the ICC. It quotes Russia's Prosecutor General, Yury Chaika, as saying that he "doesn't think setting up a special [international] court is necessary. Complaints and applications from our citizens which will be referred to the International Criminal Court would suffice." That's an interesting statement, given that Russia...
As the fighting winds down or escalates (depending on whom you believe), the legal battle that Ken discussed yesterday seems to be gearing up and getting more complex, with the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, and the European Court of Human Rights now all being mentioned in news stories. The AP is reporting the following: The Georgian security council...
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...
The sole virtue of being the last among bloggers to weigh in on yesterday’s Hamdan verdict is having a chance to read what everyone else is saying. The New York Times, the ACLU, Human Rights First and others are pretty scathing in their criticism: don’t be fooled by the patina of fairness evinced by the split verdict, this system...
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...
Well, the Hamdan verdict is in: guilty on five counts of material support to a terrorist organization, but significantly for cases to come - not guilty on the far broader charge of conspiracy. The Times’ story is here. Sentencing to follow this afternoon. This is hardly the end of the story. There will certainly be appeals. But...
I have no idea what you people are talking about. Congress has no intention of standing on the sidelines while the Supreme Court micromanages Guantanamo Bay, as Rep. Lewis Gohmert (R-Tex)'s new H.R. 6615 proves beyond even the smallest shadow of a doubt. Here is the title: To provide for the transport of the enemy combatants detained in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba...
In a similar vein as Peter and Peggy before me, I want to mine two of Ben's premises: that we are in a new kind of war and that this needs a new kind of law. I do agree in part with Ben on each of these-- I think we are facing conflict of a different sort than we have before and I also think...
I had planned to lurk on the sidelines until the discussion of Ben's fascinating book moved to the "need" for a new interrogation statute -- I, for one, am more than happy to have "interrogation laws that operate only at the highest altitude (nothing cruel or inhumane, nothing that causes severe pain or suffering) but never come down to earth,"...
We are pleased to host this week a discussion of Benjamin Wittes’ book Law and the Long War. Ben's book is a comprehensive analysis of how September 11th did--and did not--change National Security Law, the disparate group of legal mechanisms related to counter-terrorism. It is also about what the role of law in counter-terrorism should be. It is a book that is sure...
