My friends at UN Watch have relaunched a completely revamped and upgraded website. It is a great resource for information about NGO activities at the UN human rights organs and UN democratic reform efforts more generally. UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer has even started a blog section. (Click here for his comments on MLK JR day.)If you want to...
If the FBI had a file on you, what would you do? Prominent international criminal law professor Cherif Bassiouni faced precisely such a dilemma. So what did Bassiouni do? Bassiouni, who teaches at Depaul School of Law and is well known in ICC circles, requested a copy of the files, found errors in the 50-page report, and demanded that they...
The key foreign relations component of President Bush's State of the Union speech last night was the global march of democracy. It is now beyond dispute that this issue is the key to his foreign relations agenda for the second term. As he put it, "Every step toward freedom in the world makes our country safer, and so we will...
As Roger noted a couple of weeks ago, my colleague Nora Demleitner testified on behalf of newly-confirmed Justice Samuel Alito during his confirmation hearings. Nora, a criminal and immigration law expert and a former Alito clerk, has suggested that Alito will be quite progressive on certain immigration law-related issues. Here are some of her further thoughts on Alito's decision in...
If you earn income on a research expedition in Antarctica, can you claim a tax exemption for foreign earned income? The tax regulations allow an exclusion from gross income for any foreign earned income, but the latter term is defined as residency for a qualified period in a "foreign country."The United States Tax Court ruled this week in Arnett v....
Joel Stein has a piece in the L.A. Times this week entitled "Warriors and Wusses" that takes to task anyone who supports our troops in Iraq. Here is an excerpt: "I'm not for the war. And being against the war and saying you support the troops is one of the wussiest positions the pacifists have ever taken — and they're...
The Supreme Court is poised to decide one of the most important cases involving the enforceability of treaties in the last few decades (indeed, maybe the last century). In Sanchez-Llamas v. Oregon, the Supreme Court will consider whether the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations gives such aliens the private rights of action as well as the remedy of suppression for...
Ever wonder how disease spreads? Apparently not unlike the way currency travels. As reported here and here, scientists are modeling the anticipated spread of the Avian Flu based on how currency changes hands. On this website you can track the movement of money in your pocket. For example, this particular dollar has travelled 4,191 Miles in...
There is substantial commentary on the Internet and in mainstream media that is expressing cautious optimism about Hamas' victory in Palestine. The essence of these sentiments is that Hamas in power will not be the same as Hamas in opposition. I hope they are right.Before expressing optimism about what might be, let's look at what is. As the New York...
The Washington Post reports that the U.S. and South Korea will likely announce the opening of talks to sign a comprehensive free trade agreement. For the U.S, such an agreement would represent the most economically significant free trade agreement since the implementation of NAFTA in 1994.As Roger has noted, the U.S. free trade strategy under President Bush has been to...
Having personally known and admired Jack Goldsmith for years, I always suspected that there was more than meets the eye in his very short-lived tenure at the Office of Legal Counsel. We now have one public version of what transpired with Goldsmith at OLC in a Newsweek article entitled "Palace Revolt." The story appears to be based almost totally on...
Fortune Magazine reports about a session at the Davos World Economic Forum on scenarios for possible oil crises in the near future. Bill Browder of Hermitage Capital and George Soros led the session. Soros was particulalry concerned that U.S. over-reach in Iraq would further embolden countries such as Iran that want to overturn the current order. While...
