I just published at Huffington Post my last post on the UCLA nuclear threats conference entitled, How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love Preemptive Strikes. Here is an excerpt: [T]here were a few who did suggest the appropriateness of preemptive strikes. Berkeley political scientist Bob Powell said that defense and deterrence were synonymous and that the real question...
It's not international law, strictly speaking, but I rarely get to defend Bush's executive power so I'm making an exception. A very prominent liberal blogger suggested today that Bush would violate the Rules Governing Petitions for Executive Clemency if he pardoned Scooter Libby anytime soon:[Y]esterday, when Tony Snow was asked about the possibility, he refused to rule a pardon...
Please join me in welcoming ITER (Latin for “the way”) as the likely newest entrant to the roster of international organizations (IOs). Signed in Paris on November 21 of last year, ITER is the creation of EURATOM, Japan, China, India, South Korea, Russian and the United States. Its mission gives reality to what had previously been thought of...
[Chris Whytock is a Ph.D. candidate at Duke University and will join the faculty of the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law in the fall. He has kindly agreed to lend his timely analysis of the Sinochem opinion to Opinio Juris readers] On March 5, 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court announced one of its rare decisions on the doctrine...
Jean Baudrillard, the great postmodern philosopher who once described the U.S. as "the only remaining primitive society," died yesterday at age 77. Here is a snippet of his obituary in the New York Times:The author of more than 50 books and an accomplished photographer, Mr. Baudrillard ranged across different subjects, from race and gender to literature and art to...
I am blogging the UCLA nuclear threat conference over at Huffington Post. My first post on former Defense Secretary William Perry's keynote address last night is available here. Here is an excerpt: My impression after hearing Perry speak is that we must calculate the awful new arithmetic of the atomic bomb. The nuclear risk we face today is the...
When two keen observers cross the divide to agree on some basic propositions regarding anti-terrorism policies, we ought to pay attention. Ken Anderson and Elisa Massimino have this think piece out from the Stanley Foundation. (Ken will be known to readers of the blog and Elisa should be -- she heads up the Washington office of Human Rights...
I think we have talked about this before on this blog, but I don't think we ever came to a resolution on Iran's argument that Security Council sanctions against its nuclear program are "illegal." Iran's foreign minister is apparently arguing here that the UNSC resolutions are "politically motivated and unprincipled resolutions" which violate international law, rules and regulations. It...
Iran’s emerging nuclear weapons program poses a grave threat to U.S. national security interests. If left unchecked, Iran may well have a nuclear weapon within the next decade, if not sooner. See this article in the Washington Post. An Iranian nuclear weapon threatens U.S. interests in at least two distinct ways. First, there is a significant...
At least according this report by the the BBC, the foreign non-Cambodian judges slated to participate in the "hybrid" war crimes tribunal of Khmer Rouge-era defendants are threatening to pull out of the pending trials. This would effectively disband one of the more promising models for post-conflict criminal justice - the use of hybrid domestic/international tribunals. I can't...
Marking the beginning of the spring human rights season, the US State Department yesterday released its annual human rights report. Since 2003, it has become increasingly difficult for the U.S. to use this report as the effective "shaming" tool it once was. Secretary Rice's comments upon release of the report refleted this sober reality: We do not issue these...
A couple of days ago, I criticized Julian's claim that the ICC's involvement in Darfur makes the situation there worse. I still believe that, on balance, the ICC's involvement is positive. Nevertheless, articles like this give me pause:Aid workers fear war crimes accusations made by the International Criminal Court against two Sudanese suspects could hamper their work in...
