In the case of Andersen v. King County, the Washington State Supreme Court yesterday ruled that the state's Defense of Marriage Act was not unconstitutional. The court’s majority opinion and the concurring and dissenting opinions are available here. I just wanted to offer a quick comment about comparativism. It is noteworthy that the court embraces living constitutionalism,...
As I mentioned in a previous post, one of the issues that Russia did not want discussed at the G-8 summit was the status of the “frozen conflicts” in the former Soviet Union. I have spent the last year and a half researching and writing a report for the New York City Bar on one such conflict in Moldova....
According to the UK's Guardian, families of UK soldiers killed in Iraq will be permitted to bring an action in UK courts challenging the legality of the U.S./U.K. led war in Iraq. I don't have a copy of the ruling, but apparently, the UK soldiers' relatives will bring a lawsuit alleging violation of the right to life guaranteed by...
The Truman National Security Project appears to have assembled a remarkably well-credentialed network of young (as in 20- and 30-something) foreign policy experts to devise an alternative among Democrats to neocons on the one hand (to the extent that any remain Democrat) and Vietnam-era leftists on the other. The group articulates a foreign-policy vision that couples strength, including the...
The New York Times is reporting that under the proposed changes to the military commissions, hearsay evidence may be admitted in criminal prosecution of detainees. It seems the article paints a picture of this being a problem under Hamdan. Here is an excerpt from the article: Legislation drafted by the Bush administration setting out new rules on bringing terror...
Did Israel deliberately target a UN outpost? Secretary-General Kofi Annan called it an "apparently deliberate" strike that "deeply distressed" him. As quoted by CNN, he said in a statement This coordinated artillery and aerial attack on a long-established and clearly marked U.N. post at Khiyam occurred despite personal assurances given to me by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that U.N. positions...
Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review is charging that Justice Stevens' majority opinion in Hamdan has a factual mistake due to a misstatement in a brief co-authored by SCOTUSBlog founders Tom Goldstein and Amy Howe.* Justice Stevens' opinion dismisses speeches by Senators Kyl and Graham interpreting the Detainee Treatment Act to apply retroactively to Hamdan's case. In footnote 10 of...
Last week I suggested in this post that the philosophical underpinnings for human rights norms represents a synthesis of positivism and natural law. It embraces the prevailing view that international law is a secular discipline that requires positive evidence for its source material, but also reclaims elements of the Grotian tradition that recognize that in a pluralistic society natural...
Rick Kirgis has a helpful international legal analysis of North Korea's test launchings over the Sea of Japan earlier this month. Perhaps the best rule would be: crazy dictators shouldn't be allowed to play with matches. ...
The NYT recently ran an interesting article discussing how the Bush administration's policy of cutting military aid to countries that refuse to sign Article 98 agreements with the U.S. has undermined the war against terror in Africa: Last year, the United States cut off $13 million for training and equipping troops in Kenya, where operatives of Al Qaeda killed 224...
Former Khmer Rouge Military leader Ta Mok died this past Friday, July 21, in a Cambodian military hospital. Although I spent one of my most memorable evenings ever having drinks with Dith Pran, I’m no expert on Cambodia or recent efforts at bringing the Khmer Rouge to justice. But, one of my new colleagues, Jaya Ramji-Nogales, is an...
It may not be officially dead, but today the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations moved onto life support. In what effectively appears to be its death knell, the WTO suspended negotiations on all fronts, and press reports quote some negotiators as suggesting that it will be months, if not years, before they resume. But, as I mentioned...
