There are many topics that come to mind from yesterday's ASIL program, but the biggest takeaway for me came from the annual meeting with the passing of the torch from José Alvarez to Lucy Reed. The strength of any learned society depends on its leadership and Alvarez has done an exceptional job as ASIL President. His President's columns...
John Yoo now has his own song courtesy of Harry Shearer's Le Show. It's probably not a song he or those who support him will like with its chorus of "Who is Yoo . . . Torture Memo Man." And, I suspect they'll dismiss it entirely, given its very liberal source. Still, regardless of how you feel...
Michigan Law Review's "2008 Survey of Books Related to the Law" is now available on-line. Two OJ'ers have review essays in the issue: yours truly, reviewing Mark Drumbl's Atrocity, Punishment, and International Law; and Roger, reviewing Ron Krotoszynski's The First Amendment in Cross-Cultural Perspective: A Comparative Legal Analysis of the Freedom of Speech. The issue also contains a...
We celebrate the birth of new blogs, so it's only appropriate to mourn their passing. Scott Horton, long one of our most gifted bloggers, is officially calling it quits. The only consolation is that, freed from the onerous burden of churning out 2,000 blog words per day (!), Scott intends to devote more time to long-form journalism and...
Okay maybe not war exactly. But last month the Supreme Court rendered an interesting opinion resolving a bitter border dispute between Delaware and New Jersey. Just how bitter? Well, according to the Court, the dispute became so heated that “Delaware considered authorizing the National Guard to protect its border from encroachment [and] one New Jersey legislator looked...
The long-awaited peace deal in Uganda may finally get done, according to this NYT report. But the ICC problem is not going away, since Kony is saying he will sign, but not implement the deal unless his arrest warrant is lifted. And although the ICC is talking tough, it is also showing signs they are preparing for a...
I got a chance last night (in my ASIL Conference hotel room) to catch an episode of HBO's Miniseries "John Adams" (Episode 5, "Unite or Die") and it is as good as advertised. Sure, the characters look a bit silly in their costumes, but the acting is good enough to make these historical figure seem real. And there...
A couple of weeks ago, Roger suggested that "that W&L's new 3L experiential learning program will result in the general neglect of elective subjects such as international law." Mark Drumbl disagrees; here is his response:Washington & Lee Law School (where I teach) recently has elected to make the third-year of its JD entirely experiential. This means a balance of...
Finally, some good news out of Iraq:An Iraqi judicial committee has dismissed terrorism-related allegations against Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein and ordered him released nearly two years after he was detained by the U.S. military. Hussein, 36, remained in custody Wednesday at Camp Cropper, a U.S. detention facility near Baghdad's airport. A decision by a four-judge panel said Hussein's case falls under...
It's not often that an NPR show features treaties, but last week, Ira Glass of This American Life, had a fascinating story about the US-Canada International Boundary Commission (listen to Act 1). In short, he recounts a fight between a Bush-appointed commissioner Dennis Schornack and the Justice Department over the application of a series of treaties between the United...
NY Times reporter Eric Lichtblau has published an account of DOJ during the Bush years, Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice, which we can add to the growing shelf of books looking at the legal aspects of Bush Administration national security policy. It mostly hews to the formula: bad things done, people hurt, the Constitution trashed. The book...
If you will indulge a serious post about human suffering, I wanted to pass on Harvard Law Professor Bill Stuntz’s wonderful reflections on his struggle with cancer. I think it is appropriate for this blog because he reflects upon human suffering throughout the world, and emphasizes the irony that only those living in privileged, rich countries think they should...
