We have rarely if ever seen a week like this one at the United Nations. President Chavez condemning Bush as the Devil Incarnate and President Ahmadinejad calling for the return of the Apocalypse. Here is an excerpt from Chavez's speech: The hegemonic pretensions of the American empire are placing at risk the very survival of the human...
My thanks to Peter for the kind words about my new essay "The Rhetoric of Necessity (Or, Sanford Levinson's Pinteresque Conversation)." If anyone is interested in taking a look at it, it is available on SSRN here. ...
As reported in this Financial Times interview with Legal Adviser John Bellinger. How does this line up with the current difficulties between the Administration and Senate Republicans? Also from the FT, this story about how CIA interrogators in effect walked off the job at secret prisons shut down last week with the transfers to Guantanamo. ...
The NYT flags an important issue that has been largely lost in the coverage of congressional plans to overhaul the military commission system. As the NYT reports, both the Bush bill and the McCain-Graham alternative would strip federal courts of their jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus appeals from detainees held outside of the U.S. (including Guantanamo Bay). According...
... and counting. Opinio Juris had its 250,000th visit on Wednesday. We thank you for taking part in the conversation and, as always, if you have any suggestions, please let us know. ...
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg gave an interesting speech at the American Sociological Association last month on comparative experiences of women in the judiciary. The speech provides a useful perspective on how the United States Supreme Court fares compared with peer national and international tribunals on this issue. When President Carter took office in 1977, only one woman (Shirley Hufstedler) sat...
The Georgia Law Review has a Spring 2006 symposium issue recently out on emergency powers and the Constitution, organized by our own Kevin Heller and featuring a lead essay from Sanford Levinson, along with responses from Philip Bobbitt, Michael Stokes Paulsen, Kim Lane Scheppele, William Scheuerman, Mark Tushnet, and Kevin himself. It’s an excellent collection, with some genuine engagement....
A federal court last week rendered an important Alien Tort Statute decision in the case of Presbyterian Church of Sudan v. Talisman Energy, Inc. The decision is available here. The Southern District of New York granted Talisman's motion for summary judgment. I found the opinion thoughtful, detailed, and well-reasoned. The core allegation was that Talisman conspired...
In an interesting counterpoint to all the controversy over the Pope's recent remarks about Islam, a group of European Church leaders recently went to Africa to apologize for slavery and colonialism: A delegation of European church leaders, recently in Harare, has publicly apologized to Zimbabweans and Africans for the historical wrongs of colonization and slavery. At a prayer conference in Harare...
One of our readers defends Yoo’s inconsistent positions on FISA and the War Powers Act by arguing that the secrecy of the NSA program prevented Bush from defending his decision to ignore FISA, whereas no such secrecy concerns prevented Clinton from defending his decision to ignore the War Powers Act. There are two problems with that argument. First, there is no...
It was sixty years ago on this day that Winston Churchill delivered his famous "Let Europe Arise" speech in Zurich, Switzerland. His hope was that a "United States of Europe" would return Europe from the Dark Ages. There are numerous ways to judge the success or failure of the European Union. But in terms of Churchill's original...
I stand behind my description of Yoo, but Julian’s thoughtful post deserves a less facile response. So let’s consider Yoo’s claim about Clinton’s violation of the War Powers Act. Here is Julian’s explanation of why Yoo’s attack on Clinton is not inconsistent with his defense of Bush: His complaint about Clinton's violation of the War Powers Act is that...
