Foreign Policy.com reports: "Cloture passed on a 65-31 vote," a Congressional source relays at 11:30am. "There was applause in the Senate gallery after the vote was announced. Republicans are threatening to exercise their right to use all 30 hours of floor debate before permitting a final vote, so Koh may not be formally confirmed until tomorrow." See also IntLawGrrls. Yesterday, by the...
I have remained largely silent on Harold Koh's confirmation battle, which is probably about the end this week with a vote in the Senate. I assume that Koh will be confirmed (because I don't think the Senate Democrats would hold a vote if they didn't have the votes). And part of me is glad because, as many of this blog's...
Former Bush Sudan envoy and USAID chief Andrew Natsios has a clearheaded, wise, and knowledgeable op-ed today on the prospects for peace in Sudan. He makes a couple of points that lawyers who only think of Sudan as a proving ground for the ICC should keep in mind: 1) Sudan is a tragedy, but it is probably not an ongoing genocide: First,...
[ Laura Dickinson is the Foundation Professor of Law, Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State University.] After three months of unwarranted delay, the cloture vote on State Department Legal Adviser nominee Dean Harold Hongju Koh is finally scheduled for tomorrow. (See Chris Borgen's post, here.) Predictably, critics on the right are gearing up with robocalls and email campaigns aimed at...
(Note from Ken: OJ has been very pleased to have Amos Guiora guest-blogging with us last week, offering a series of posts on the question of administrative detention in Israel, and how its legal and security system address the many complex questions raised. I raised to Amos a question about the role of the judiciary in Israel in counterterrorism operations,...
Well, it's about time. On Monday, Senator Harry Reid moved for cloture of debate on the nomination of Harold Koh to be the State Department's legal adviser. (Be sure to check out this article.) Sixty votes will be needed for cloture and then fifty votes for his confirmation. Both votes are expected to come this Wednesday, assuming no further shenanigans. Three months ago, the...
Legend has it that the Danes undermined German efforts to persecute Jews in Denmark by acting in solidarity with them by wearing the yellow star. (And yes I know the story is apocryphal). We can't exactly do the same thing today for Iranians, but one small act of solidarity we can do is make it easier for Iranians to...
The US Supreme Court accepted cert this morning in the case of United States v. Comstock; the cert papers can be found at SCOTUSblog and thanks to Jonathan Adler at Volokh for the tip. Volokh Conspiracy has a series of prior posts on the subject, accessible here. The case is a challenge under the Commerce Clause to the post-sentence civil...
Thanks to my research assistant Heather Bourne, I've been reading a few of Judge Sotomayor's cases involving treaties. And although Julian suggested a few weeks ago that Sotomayor might be a closet sovereigntist, at least one case -- her dissent in Croll v. Croll, 229 F.3d 133 (2d Cir. 2000) -- suggests that she has internationalist leanings as well (subject...
Saree Makdisi, a professor of comparative literature at UCLA and an old friend from the literature program at Duke, has a superb editorial in today's Los Angeles Times about the media's -- and thus our -- use of language concerning Israel and Palestine. Here's a taste: In the U.S., discussion of Palestinian politicians and political movements often relies on a spectrum...
Stephen Walt has a fun piece on the International Relations Guide to Parenting. Here's a taste: [N]o parent can monitor everything a child does (and you'd end up with a pretty neurotic kid if you tried), and you eventually reach a point where physical restraint (in IR terms, "pure defense") isn't practical. So we all rely on deterrence -- "if...
Roger, I was thinking about your post below on the Iran elections, and your comment on the 1981 Algiers Accords, which provide that "it is and from now on will be the policy of the United States not to intervene, directly or indirectly, politically or militarily, in Iran’s internal affairs." Failure to comply, you note in your post, could result in a...
