With all the recent talk of electronic surveillance, the NSA, and FISA, I want to point out a sidebar to the history of surveillance and cryptography. Three encoded Nazi messages—products of the famed Enigma encryption system—that had gone unbroken since WWII are being deciphered by a group of amateurs using networked computers via the Internet. The first message...
As we relaunch Opinio Juris at our new site, we are all extremely pleased to welcome our newest permanent blog contributor, Professor Kevin Heller. Since we began our blog just over a year ago, Kevin has been a valuable commentator, informal adviser, and friend to Opino Juris. As our readers have noted, he has been a terrific guest writer...
The U.S. and India have reached a landmark nuclear cooperation agreement by which the U.S. will give India access to civilian nuclear technology and India appears to give international inspectors access to its civilian nuclear facilities. The deal is the centerpiece of President Bush's current visit to India and, indeed, is an important symbol of future U.S. cooperation with...
Hat-tip: Think Progress. ...
We are now located at the new and improved Opinio Juris site: www.opiniojuris.org.We'll see you there...
Pope Benedict XVI issued his Ash Wednesday sermon today and focused on development and world poverty. Here is an excerpt: "Even in this era of global interdependence, it is clear that no economic, social, or political project can replace that gift of self to another through which charity is expressed. Those who act according to the logic of the Gospel...
In the wake of the murder of al-Arabiya correspondent Atwar Bahjat and two of her colleagues, a journalist asked President Jalal Talabani to permit journalists working in Iraq to carry weapons in self-defense. "Send me an official request and I will approve it and inform concerned agencies to give you the right to carry arms," President Talabani replied.The exchange...
Sarah Cleveland has just published a very significant article in the Yale Journal of International Law entitled "Our International Constitution." Cleveland is a great writer and her article is a pleasure to read, even though I sharply differ with her on the appropriateness of using international law to interpret constitutional guarantees (see my articles here, here and here).Cleveland is...
The following is a quick summary of the ICC's work to date, courtesy of the International Justice Tribune:Since its creation in July 2002, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has received 1,732 pieces of communication about crimes committed in 139 countries. According to the second summary published by the office of the prosecutor on February 10, 60% of the information came...
The new African Court of Human and People's Rights, which was established as Africa's new regional international court, will sit in Arusha, Tanzania. This is not exactly a surprise. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda already sits there and its mandate will expire in 2008, so it makes a lot of sense to take advantage of the existing...
The U.S. government has announced that it will oppose the current proposal for a new Human Rights Council to take the place of the much-derided U.N. Commission on Human Rights. (The new proposal is here.) Although the U.S. has been pushing for a new Council, it is not happy with the current proposal, which would not guarantee the exclusion...
Following up on my earlier posts about Saddam and Serbia:Prosecutors at Saddam's trial introduced two important documents yesterday. The first is a memo from the Revolutionary Court, dated June 14, 1984, listing the names of 148 suspects that had been sentenced to death by hanging. The chief prosecutor, Jaafar al-Moussawi, said the signature on the memo was that of...
