The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled today that an alien resident of the U.S. alleged to be affiliated with Al Qaeda cannot be detained as an "enemy combatant." (al-Marri v. Wright). Al-Marri is a citizen of Qatar who is alleged to have trained at Al Qaeda training camps prior to September 11 and who was...
I have posted a new essay on SSRN entitled "Mistakes of Legal Element, the Common Law, and Article 32 of the Rome Statute: A Critical Analysis." Here is the abstract:Article 32(2) of the Rome Statute provides that "[a] mistake of law may… be a ground for excluding criminal responsibility if it negates the mental element required by such a...
The Los Angeles Times has a must-read article today about how the CIA has been using Sudanese nationals to spy on insurgents — including al-Qaida — in Iraq:The relationship underscores the complex realities of the post-Sept. 11 world, in which the United States has relied heavily on intelligence and military cooperation from countries, including Sudan and Uzbekistan, that are considered...
I somehow doubt this will go very far, but who knows? Russian President Vladimir Putin called Sunday for creating an alternative to the World Trade Organization that would favor developing economies and suggested giving a greater role to regional currencies. Speaking at an economic forum in Russia's second-largest city of St. Petersburg, Putin lamented that today's international economic organizations ''look archaic, undemocratic...
The Inter American Court of Human Rights has ruled that Colombia must pay $7.8 million in damages to the relatives of 12 judicial workers killed in a 1989 massacre by Colombian-army backed paramilitary groups. According to news reports, the ruling seems to establish a standard for assigning state liability for paramilitary groups, an important and complicated issue. The judgment was...
From the "oy gevalt" file:A Berkeley watchdog organization that tracks military spending said it uncovered a strange U.S. military proposal to create a hormone bomb that could purportedly turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting. Pentagon officials on Friday confirmed to CBS 5 that military leaders had considered, and then subsquently rejected, building the...
Over at Balkinization, Marty Lederman has posted a thorough critique of John Bellinger's recent speech. Lederman takes a nuanced view of what it is the Administration has said, versus what was forced upon the Administration by the Supreme Court and finds that Bellinger's speech sometimes reads more like an alternate -reality of what might have been had the State Department...
I just noticed this decision yesterday by the Canadian Supreme Court holding that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms generally does not apply to searches and seizures in foreign countries, even those that eventually result in evidence that is used in a trial of a Canadian citizen. I'm far from knowledgeable about Canadian law, but it does seem...
Things just keep getting worse for Chiquita Brands International, Inc. Yesterday, families of victims killed by a right-wing Colombia terrorist group (the United Self Defence Forces of Colombia or AUC) sued Chiquita in D.C. federal court alleging Chiquita is responsible or at least liable for the AUC's actions. As Kevin noted a few months ago, Chiquita, the U.S. banana giant,...
There has been a lot of buzz on the blogosphere (see here, here, and here) about this article by Jason Nance and Dylan Steinberg in which they outline the results of a national survey they conducted on the law review article selection process. Any law professor who has an interest in top placement of their articles in student law journals (i.e.,...
Like Roger, I’m teaching abroad this summer, spending June in Rome as part of Temple Law’s Summer in Rome Program (I’m joined by my fellow blogger, Dave Hoffman of Concurring Opinions, whose the photographer of record for this trip). We’ve got almost 80 students from around the United States in the program, taking classes such as International Dispute Resolution,...
Readers of this blog know that the top legal adviser at the U.S. State Department, John Bellinger, is not afraid to take on critics of the U.S. government's treatment of international law. He did so on this blog a few months ago. Yesterday, he went into the "capital" of international law, the Hague, to defend the U.S. administration's approach...
