Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response
21 May Previewing Benjamin Wittes’ New Book on Law and Terror and Guantanamo
I understand that Opinio Juris will be hosting a discussion of Benjamin Wittes’ new book, Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice in the Age of Terror (Penguin 2008) when it is released for distribution on June 19. That is a very good thing to do. I have heard Ben present material from that book and My Sources have got me an advance copy, which I am now reading, and I think it is the most important new element in the discussion of terrorism, detainees, and Guantanamo to...22 May Battlefield Robots as a Technological Response to ‘Lawfare’, and the Limits to Technological Counters to Bad Behavior
...reprisal against enemy violations of the laws of war.” He is quite correct about this, of course, and it makes me realize that I wasn’t as clear as I should have been above. So let me add this response: Correct, no one considers reprisal as a response today, and certainly not against categories of protected persons under the Geneva Conventions. Nor should we, let me be completely clear. But that is the point – in the contemporary period, because we have given up reprisal as a behavioral response to violations,...07 May Has the Obama Justice Department Adopted the Bybee/Yoo Interpretation of the Torture Statute?
...takes us” (emphasis added), the Obama Justice Department is relying on the very same legal analysis in order to urge a federal appeals court to reject torture claims. In fact, as the Obama Justice Department argued to that appeals court a little over a week ago, the torture law analysis in question has already been adopted by another federal appeals court. I am sympathetic to Deborah’s criticsm of McCarthy’s recent somewhat over-the-top letter rejecting an offer to participate in deliberations on detention policy with the Justice Department. But his legal...08 Aug Justice Kennedy’s Mystery Speech
...religion gaining a stronghold in governments now is the time for American lawyers to herald the American system of law and governance. (link). So which is it? Roger Alford Dean C. Rowan Sounds like Justice Kennedy is fashioning himself for a career shift, either to writing pulp fiction, greeting cards, advertising copy, or sermons. It's unmitigated malarkey. "Liberating force"...that's a good one. Time to reread Robert Cover's Violence and the Word. Charles Gittings Roger, I don't think I'm finding anything more than what Justice Kennedy said, though perhaps 4.5 years...14 Sep The Inevitable Attack on the Goldstone Commission
on Justice Goldstone himself, however, are even more disturbing. UN Watch, a right-wing NGO, isn’t shy about expressing its disdain for him: “no one has ever disputed that the Arab-controlled Human Rights Council deliberately selected individuals who had made up their mind well in advance — not only that Israel was guilty, but that a democratic state with an imperfect but respected legal system should be considered the same as, or worse than, a terrorist group.” Their evidence for Justice Goldstone having already decided, despite his history and his reputation,...19 Aug An Opportunity for Judicial Review of the Existence of Armed Conflict?
...an armed conflict. It is has been reported that the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) issued an opinion in which it found the U.S. to be in an “armed conflict” with al Qaeda in 1998. On the other hand, the U.S. has prosecuted alleged participants in the bombings in a federal, not a military court. Given the very indistinct nature of the executive’s response and the lack of any action by Congress, it would be difficult to find these bombings and the U.S. response anything more than limited...23 Apr Want to Prosecute the Lawyers? Cite Ministries — Not the Justice Case
Scholars who believe that the individuals who wrote the OLC memos authorizing torture should be criminally prosecuted — as I do — normally cite the Justice Case, decided by the Nuremberg Military Tribunal (NMT) in 1947, for the proposition that a government lawyer can be held criminally responsible for giving erroneous legal advice to his political superiors. Last year, I wrote a long post for Balkinization explaining why I believe that, in fact, the Justice Case provides much less support for that proposition than most scholars assume. As I said...21 Jun I Agree with Justice Roberts…
Patrick S. O'Donnell A nice illustration of an appalling lack of empathy (and sympathy, compassion, mercy and the like for that matter) among the majority Justices (in their capacity as judges and in their identity as human beings) and an outstanding example of a fundamental failure to grasp the ethical and legal meaning of the phrase "criminal justice." Moreover, it exemplifies an egregious inability to appreciate the virtues (such as they are or might be) of contemporary science. Alas, as you imply, the ruling evidences a smug commitment to ORDER...