Interesting and generally positive line-up of participants in today’s UNICCO-SEIU-community meeting. The list is notable for the very large participation by UM law faculty — and our Dean.
Disclosure: President Shalala asked me to participate in this effort (I’m unclear as to why, and even feared she may have thought I was Michael Fischl!), but I declined, both because I’m in Boston today and because I know how little I know about labor law.
cf. Picketline blog
Roger Alford has a well-written and informative post describing the process by which the plenary of the American Society of International Law (ASIL) adopted the resolution I blogged about yesterday.
Prof. Alford disapproves, and he gives his reason,
My own view, which clearly is a minority one today but appears to be the traditional view if one looks at the historical sweep, is that the ASIL should avoid passing these resolutions. Such resolutions, while perhaps uncontroversial in content, are nonetheless controversial in their choice of forum and timing.
In this case, the clear implication of the resolution is that these norms are being ignored or violated by the United States. The drafting history of the resolution undeniably underscores this fact. It is in this sense a political resolution directed at the United States, admonishing it for its misconduct. It appears to be the first resolution in the Society’s history that relates to broad issues of international compliance with the laws of war and humanitarian law. In the past 100 years, a century in which “mankind experienced some of the most destructive wars of all times,” States have transgressed these international obligations on innumerable occasions. And yet the Society only now sees fit to pass such a resolution. One can only help but ask, “Why now?”
It seems to me that the multitude of replies to this question begin with “Do you read the newspapers?” and “If not now, when?”
If the US makes detention without trial or POW statuts official policy and torture its de facto national policy, something which has not frequently been the case in the past 100 years, then maybe that’s an occcasion for the American Society of anything to speak up. Especially if it’s something to do with law.
It seems I will be teaching Jurisprudence again next year after a long hiatus. (That link is to the old syllabus; it will change some.)
Although I start with The Case of the Speluncean Explorers, I think, slightly wistfully, that I won’t be able to include this modern version from Legal Fiction.
Exactly which of the following statements from yesterday’s proposed resolution of the American Society of International Law (ASIL) is political?
1. Resort to armed force is governed by the Charter of the United Nations and other international law (jus ad bellum)
2. Conduct of armed conflict and occupation is governed by the Geneva [Conventions] of August 12, 1949 and other international law (jus in bello)
3. Torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of any person in the custody or control of a state are prohibited by international law from which no derogations are permitted.
4. Prolonged, secret, incommunicado detention of any person in the custody or control of a state is prohibited by international law.
5. Standards of international law regarding treatment of persons extend to all branches of national governments, to their agents, and to all combatant forces.
6. In some circumstances, commanders (both military and civilian) are personally responsible under international law for the acts or their subordinates.
7. All states should maintain security and liberty is a manner consistent with their international law obligations.
(Leave aside the possibly Freudian slip by the scribe, who wrote “Contentions” for “Conventions” in paragraph two.)
This is actually pretty tame stuff. Statements 1-6 are pretty standard boilerplate recitations of well-known principles of international law. (For example, I think you would be hard-put to find a teacher of international law in any civilized country who would give a student credit for writing the opposite on a final exam.) Number seven just says that countries should follow the law.
So what is “political”? And if this is “political,” what’s non-political? Cowed silence in the face of barbarity?
I’m leaving for Boston shortly in order to attend what promises to be a really interesting symposium organized by the Boston College Law Review on Owning Standards. I think that the conference organizers and moderators (Profs. Lawrence Cunningham, Joe Liu and Fred Yen) have done something very clever: they’ve identified an important but under-theorized topic and are focusing attention on it. Not only do I get to see a bunch of smart and nice folks, but I hope to learn a lot too. And the weather forecast says it will only be cold at night.
Caroline writes,
I was stunned to read today that the Halle Orchestra, founded in 1858 and based in my home town (city) of Manchester, has canceled a planned US tour because it decided that the enormous cost of obtaining visas (because of lost work days due to the need to visit the US embassy in London for personal interviews) meant that the visit was not sensible from an economic point of view. I have heard similar stories about academics deciding not to try to come to the US because it is too complicated.
Manchester is four to five hours from London. And these same musicians could have tourist visas without question and without interviews. But if they’re going to play for us (which I suppose involved some payment somewhere), they each have to have personal interviews.
And these idiotic visa policies make us better off how exactly?
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