Waiver of immunity is at the center of another cholera case against the UN, this time in the Eastern District of New York. In LaVenture et al v. United Nations, the plaintiffs argue that they have two distinct questions on waiver that distinguish this litigation from the recent decision upholding the UN's absolute immunity in Georges et al. The questions...
Cross-posted at Balkinization If, as I argued earlier this week, the 2001 AUMF passed by Congress cannot be read to authorize the growing set of U.S. military actions against Syrian and Iranian forces in Syria, does the President’s Article II power standing alone support these strikes? The best articulated argument I’ve seen that the President has the Article II power to...
As many readers are probably aware, the ACLU is currently bringing an ATS action against the two psychologists, James Mitchell and John Jessen, who allegedly designed and administered the CIA's torture program. Here is the ACLU's summary of the case, Salim v. Mitchell: The CIA paid the two men and the company they later formed tens of millions of dollars over the...
Cross-posted at Balkinization Because it’s too easy for our growing war in Syria to get lost amidst other also-pressing news, I want to be sure to note that last week ended with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee formally requesting the Trump Administration’s legal justification for a growing set of clashes between the U.S. military and armed forces allied with Syrian President...
When last we met William Bradford, he had just published an article in the National Security Law Journal (NSLJ) accusing centrist national-security-law professors of treason and advocating prosecuting them for providing material support to terrorists. After many scholars, including me, pointed out that the article was both absurd and deeply offensive, the NSLJ repudiated the article. (Alas, the journal has since scrubbed the...
One of the most basic assumption of ICL is that an act cannot be a war crime unless it violates a rule of international humanitarian law (IHL). Article 6(b) of the London Charter criminalised "War Crimes: namely, violations of the laws or customs of war." Article 3 of the ICTY Statute provides that "[t]he International Tribunal shall have the power to prosecute...
I've got a new draft article up on SSRN (you can download it here) entitled China and the U.S. Strategic Construction of Cybernorms: the Process is the Product. It was written for a really great inter-disciplinary workshop held at Stanford Law School earlier this Spring by the Hoover Institution's National Security, Technology and Law Working Group (which is chaired by...
Longtime readers of this blog may have noticed that one of my pet peeves is the incorrect usage of international legal terms in public and diplomatic discourse. Hence, Israel did NOT commit "piracy" during the 2010 Gaza flotilla raid despite lots of governments claiming otherwise. Cuba is not under a "blockade" despite tons of Cuban government propaganda otherwise. So you can imagine my...
Distracted by #ComeyDay and other international crises, I missed this recent U.S. federal court decision in Sexual Minorities of Uganda v. Lively, dismissing an Alien Tort Statute lawsuit on Kiobel extra-territoriality grounds. While using unusually critical language to denounce U.S. pastor-defendant Scott Lively's involvement in Uganda's anti-homosexual laws and actions, the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts held: ...
[Anthea Roberts is an Associate Professor at the School of Regulation and Global Governance, Australian National University.] In withdrawing from the Paris Accord, President Donald Trump emphatically rejected globalism in favor of nationalism. “As president, I can put no other consideration before the well-being of American citizens,” he explained. “I am fighting every day for the great people of this country....
[Daniel Bodansky is Foundation Professor of Law at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State University.] As usual, in his announcement yesterday about the Paris Agreement, President Trump spoke loudly but carried a small stick. Duncan laid out the options for withdrawal in his post earlier this week. Rather than choosing the “nuclear option” of withdrawing from the UN Framework...
President Trump has indicated that he will announce a decision on future U.S. participation in the Paris Agreement later today at 3 pm. Reports suggest that he has already made up his mind to withdraw. That decision is likely to receive extensive attention (not to mention criticism) on the merits. And certainly that attention is warranted. But I believe an...
