By any measure the letter from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is significant. It is the first direct contact between the leaders of Iran and the United States since the Iranian Revolution. Over twenty-fives years of silence. And then comes this most unusual letter. There are several things that struck me as remarkable about the letter. First, Ahmadinejad's...
The European Journal of International Law’s most recent issue contains a symposium on global administrative law, an area of vigorous scholarly interest of late, premised on the observation that, as Benedict Kingsbury and Nico Krisch put it, “much of global governance can be understood as regulation and administration.” Because this sort of governance – ranging from informal international agreements...
Allegations of sexual abuse continue to plague peacekeepers and aid workers in Africa. A study conducted by Save the Children, based on interviews with more than 300 people, has concluded that selling young women for sex has reached epidemic proportions in Liberian camps for the displaced: The children and adults who participated in the study were very open and...
Andrew Sullivan notes here the release of the Kings College London annual report on rates of imprisonment around the world. Here is the link. Sullivan summarizes: The rates are given as the number of prison inmates per 100,000 people in the population at large. It's pretty staggering that by far the highest rates of imprisonment occur in the U.S....
The U.S. has filed an extradition request for Isaac Kwame Amuah, Nelson Mandela's son in-law, with the South African government. Amuah was charged in 1994 with raping a 34-year-old student; later that year, a Connecticut judge allowed him to spend Chrismas in South Africa with his family, on the condition that he would return to the U.S. to stand...
A copy of the letter from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to President George Bush is now available. A copy of it is here. Here is a short summary: President Bush you are a hypocrite. (page 1). You profess to be a Christian, present liberalism as a civilized model, oppose WMDs, and work toward a unified international community, but...
One of the most exciting things about the University of Auckland Faculty of Law, my home in less than a month now, is that a significant percentage of its students and faculty are Maori. So I was very disturbed to come across this article, discussing Philip Morris's recent apology to the Maori for selling "Maori Mix" cigarettes in Israel....
Public international law concerns itself with topics ranging from the weighty issues of war and peace to the seemingly silly questions of whether foreign diplomats and consular officers should be exempt from paying parking tickets and bridge and tunnel tolls. But silly questions have a way of creating waves that can lead in unpredictable directions. The current US Ambassador to...
One of the new and exciting developments in technology is podcasting. So far the use of podcasting on academic blogs is in its infancy. Very few law blogs (Ann Althouse is an exception) include podcasting as part of their content. Significantly, the Council on Foreign Relations has just started a library of podcasting available here. ...
State Department Legal Advisor John Bellinger concluded his response to the UN Committee Against Torture yesterday, addressing over 50 questions concerning the U.S. practice and policy relating to torture. The UN's summary of Friday's meeting is available here and Monday's meeting is available here. (The State Department has not yet issued summaries or transcripts). It is...
As veteran readers of this blog may recall, I've been studying the way that federal courts use foreign decisions, a hot topic since the Supreme Court cited European cases in Roper, Atkins, and Lawrence, all of which were decisions expanding constitutional protections, and all of which have been hotly decried and hotly defended for resorting to foreign law. I...
I had the opportunity to see United 93 over the weekend. Resist the doubters and go see this movie. It is more than worth the price of admission. It achieves one of its principal goals, which was to address the question, "What should be our response to terrorism?" In the words of Director Paul Greengrass, "the terrible dilemma those...
