Paul Volcker has issued an important call for UN reform in the introduction to a new book on the Oil-for-Food scandal. In the just published book, Good Intentions Corrupted edited by Jeffrey Meyer and Mark Califano, Volcker outlines his conclusions regarding the need for reform at the United Nations. Some of these recommendations have been reported before, but...
Waves of luminaries descended on the second annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative the end of last week in New York. On the one hand, it looks like a cult of personality, or perhaps of multiple personalities, in the sense of lots of very important people coming together to bask in each other’s reflected glory. Check out...
The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) celebrated its tenth anniversary last Monday. This week, ITLOS will host a formal ceremony and symposium in Hamburg to mark the occasion. But does ITLOS really have all that much to celebrate? I wonder whether members of the Tribunal might actually view its first ten years as...
John Kerry gave an interesting speech at Pepperdine University this week on the intersection of faith and politics. You can read the speech here or watch it here. He raised a number of important questions that are worth sharing. The Washington Post said of the speech that Kerry described "his religious life in greater candor and detail...
Who wins the bet if this happens? Do Julian and I have to buy each other a beer? Steve Clemons has the latest on the Bolton nomination:So far, there has been no sign that the Bush administration's considerable efforts to get Ambassador John Bolton confirmed are yielding any success in changing the environment currently blocking him. But the White...
Here's my definition of a very bad week — first you're arrested on suspicion of genocide, then you lose your job:The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) on Wednesday cancelled the contract of a member of the defence council, Callixte Gakwaya, after being suspected of committing genocide. The case of Gakwaya had recently caused tension in relations between the regime in...
As we wrap up the first week of the General Assembly, I thought it might be a useful educational service to link to Ali G.'s trip to the UN in which he conducts an insightful interview with former UN SecGen Boutros Boutros Gali and visits the Security Council chamber. How many UN structural reform issues can you spot? Buyakasha! For...
The Bush-McCain Senate compromise was released late yesterday afternoon and already the blogosphere is busily analyzing it. Marty Lederman (of course) and blogosphere newcomer Bobby Chesney have already read, chewed, and largely digested the compromise agreement with respect to the Geneva Conventions' Common Article 3. A copy of that portion of the agreement can be found here thanks to...
We have rarely if ever seen a week like this one at the United Nations. President Chavez condemning Bush as the Devil Incarnate and President Ahmadinejad calling for the return of the Apocalypse. Here is an excerpt from Chavez's speech: The hegemonic pretensions of the American empire are placing at risk the very survival of the human...
My thanks to Peter for the kind words about my new essay "The Rhetoric of Necessity (Or, Sanford Levinson's Pinteresque Conversation)." If anyone is interested in taking a look at it, it is available on SSRN here. ...
As reported in this Financial Times interview with Legal Adviser John Bellinger. How does this line up with the current difficulties between the Administration and Senate Republicans? Also from the FT, this story about how CIA interrogators in effect walked off the job at secret prisons shut down last week with the transfers to Guantanamo. ...
The NYT flags an important issue that has been largely lost in the coverage of congressional plans to overhaul the military commission system. As the NYT reports, both the Bush bill and the McCain-Graham alternative would strip federal courts of their jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus appeals from detainees held outside of the U.S. (including Guantanamo Bay). According...
