In association with the International Commission of Jurists

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25 Nov

Recently declassified documents at the National Security Archives show how President Nixon and Henry Kissinger were concerned that U.S. nuclear strategy was basically only a single option: Mutually Assured Destruction. The documents show how a mix of moralism, strategy, bureaucratic politics, and even Watergate drove the National Security Council to grapple with the idea whether there could be a limited...

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25 Nov

Pinochet has posted bail and now remains free. See details here. The BBC has the best coverage of the indictments, one for tax evasion and the other for kidnapping. The coverage includes links, a profile, related articles, and background information. A full list of all news stories about the Pinochet indictments is available from Google here. As of Friday morning...

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23 Nov

Today is Thanksgiving Day in the United States, one of the truly great and distinctive national holidays of our country. The only obligation of Thanksgiving is that we celebrate and give thanks for the bounty that is ours. George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation is a regular fixture at Thanksgiving celebrations in many homes throughout the country. As noted here, it was...

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23 Nov

After months of whining by high-level Canadian politicians, the U.S. Commerce Department announced yesterday that the U.S. will comply with a NAFTA tribunal's decision requiring the reduction or elimination of U.S. duties on Canadian lumber. The U.S. refusal to eliminate these duties had been one of the main sources of friction between the U.S. and Canada and potentially threatened the...

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23 Nov

An Australian national convicted by Singapore of drug running is facing execution next week, causing much justifiable angst in Australia. Some are advising the Australian government to seek a provisional measures order from the ICJ to stop the execution. As Australia's Prime Minister announced today, however, such an appeal to the ICJ would be "pointless" because Singapore hasn't done anything...

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23 Nov

It is hard to believe that a decade has passed since the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords that brought an end to the war in Bosnia. The peace in Bosnia certainly came too late for many (260,000 lost their lives in the war, over a million were displaced), but it did finally end the bloodshed. The implementation force for...

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23 Nov

The ABA Section on International Law and Practice has just published the 2004 Year-in-Review. It is the best one-volume summary describing the developments in international law for the past year. It always comes out much too late, but it is a great resource. The reference begins at 39 International Lawyer 169 (2005).Chapters include antitrust, environmental, trade, commercial...

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22 Nov

Although it gets us a bit far afield from the focus of Opinio Juris, I'm going to follow Roger and Julian's lead and blog briefly regarding the Padilla indictment. (Yes, I'm still here. Sorry to have been so quite the past two weeks, but I do plan to be more active in the days ahead!)Many months ago, there was considerable...

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22 Nov

A copy of the Padilla indictment is available from ABC news here. The blogosphore is abuzz with the news. Discussion can be found at SCOTUSblog here, Prawfblawgs here, and Balkinization here.I'm a little surprised by the reaction I've seen so far. Isn't this somewhat analogous to the Bush Administration's response in Medellin? In that case at the last minute the...

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22 Nov

The Washington Post is reporting that Jose Padilla, the alleged dirty bomber held for three years as an "enemy combatant", has been indicted by a federal grand jury for conspiring to commit terrorist attacks overseas. Interestingly, the indictment does not include the "dirty bomb" charges that were the basis for Padilla's detention as an enemy combatant. The obvious reason...

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22 Nov

There is a wonderful story in the Washington Post yesterday about Brad Pitt becoming immersed in the intricacies of international trade. Pitt is fast becoming an outspoken advocate for Africa, and he is coming to realize how central trade is to that agenda.The tutorial was sponsored by a group called DATA (debt, AIDS, trade, Africa) established by U2 lead singer...

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21 Nov

Creighton University School of Law has recently been awarded a $750,000 U.S. government grant to create a "a working model to establish a bilateral U.S.-Cuba property claims tribunal." The goal is to have this model in place, along with others, for eventual use to ease Cuba's post-Castro transition to democracy.The grant to Creighton has already been the subject of some...

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