International Law

Justice Jackson cross-examines Hermann Goering

Featured image John Hinderaker and I wrote this article for Bench & Bar of Minnesota, the monthly publication of the Minnesota State Bar Association. It was published in the October 2002 issue. I provided background on it here yesterday. Working on this article was a labor of love. I hoped it would be both interesting and useful. I did my best to get the facts straight and provide examples within the space »

Cross-examining Hermann Goering

Featured image Former United States Attorney and federal district judge Herbert Stern retired from the bench and returned to private practice in 1987. While on the bench he wrote the memoir Judgment In Berlin (1984), which was turned into a 1988 movie directed by Leo Penn. The movie starred Martin Sheen and Sean Penn. Morton Mintz reviewed the book for the Washington Post here and Professor Maynard Pirsig for the William Mitchell »

Voltaire, call your office

Featured image In his Essay on General History and on the Manners and Spirit of Nations, Voltaire observed that the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire. To take a current analogue, think of the Southern Poverty Law Center or the International Court of Justice. This is the point Alan Dershowitz makes regarding the ICJ in the opening of his column “The International Court Of ‘Injustice’ Begins Its »

Trouble in mind

Featured image Adam Schiff calls it “troubling news” that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has thwarted his selection to serve on the House Intelligence Committee. That is about as reliable as Schiff’s statements in support of the Russia hoax and all the rest. Indeed, he doesn’t mention McCarthy’s stated reason for removing him from the committee. The Schiff version is — what else? — a lie. The competition is intense, but Schiff must »

Analyze this

Featured image Eugene Kontorovich is professor at George Mason’s Antonin Scalia School of Law, specializing in constitutional and international law. He is director of Scalia Law School’s Center for the Middle East and International Law. Before coming to George Mason, he had been a professor at Northwestern University School of Law for 11 years. In the interview with RT below, Professor Kontorovich “explain[s] why Israel is not violating international law with its »

Globalist dogma means the end of America, and for many that’s the goal

Featured image John Fonte has written an excellent article called “End Nationalism, End America.” For many on the left, that’s the point. They may dislike nationalism, but what they really can’t stand is America. Their target isn’t the nation state; it’s our nation state. That’s why they want to cede as much of our sovereignty as they can get away with to international bodies. Fonte writes: If progressive liberal esteem for the »

Democracy dies in global governance

Featured image Anne Marie Slaughter was an official in the Obama State Department. Now, she’s a professor at Princeton and head of New America (formerly the New America Foundation), a liberal think tank. Slaughter supports “global governance.” By this, she says she means that nations would cede sovereign authority to supranational institutions in cases requiring global solutions to global problems. But who would decide whether a given problem requires a global solution? »

John Bolton hits a home run; the Washington Post calls it a foul ball

Featured image The Washington Post’s board of editors attacks John Bolton for a speech in which he harshly criticized the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Post doesn’t defend the ICC. In an understatement, the Post agrees that “the court has its defects.” However, the editorial board castigates Bolton for using his “first significant public address” to talk about what the editors deem an irrelevancy. The editors think Bolton should have discussed Syria, »

Bolton to ICC: Baby, don’t you do it

Featured image The International Criminal Court is one of those unaccountable multilateral organizations beloved by President Obama. The ICC prosecutor now threatens to undertake an investigation of the United States for war crimes in Afghanistan. Speaking on behalf of President Trump at a Federalist Society event this afternoon, National Security Advisor John Bolton had an unambiguous message for the ICC. In the words of the Motown song: Baby, don’t you do it. »

U.N. warns that repealing Obamacare may be illegal

Featured image Dana Milbank reports, with glee, that the United Nations “has contacted the Trump administration as part of an investigation into whether repealing [Obamacare] without an adequate substitute for the millions who would lose health coverage would be a violation of several international conventions that bind the United States.” The warning comes from the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights in Geneva. The U.N. Human Rights Commission (now »

Why Obama parrots Tehran’s talking points

Featured image Sen. Bob Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a Democrat, spoke for many of us when he characterized the administration as parroting Iran’s talking points on nuclear negotiations. But it isn’t just in the realm of nuclear talks that Obama acquiesces to Iranian positions. Charles Krauthammer points out that the administration is also acquiescing to Iranian domination of Syria, having told the New York Times that it »

Power and Constraint — a book review

Featured image Jack Goldsmith is a professor at Harvard Law School. During part of President George W. Bush’s first term, Goldsmith served as Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice. His is one of the best legal minds I know of. Goldsmith is the author of Power and Constraint: The Accountable Presidency After 9/11, published earlier this year. I have written a review of »

What the IOC teaches us

Featured image Friday’s opening ceremony at the London Olympics proceeded without any moment of silence for, or other tribute to, the Israeli athletes who were murdered at the Munich Olympics by Palestinian terrorists 40 years ago. There was, however, a moment of silence for the victims of the two world wars and other international conflicts. Thus, IOC President Jacques Rogge was lying when he claimed that the decision not to honor the »

Taming international law — Israel as the canary in the coal mine

Featured image No aspect of the modern leftist project poses more danger than the left’s approach to international law. By definition, international law is in tension with national sovereignty, but the “transnationalist” approach to international law advanced by leftists threatens to run roughshod over sovereignty. And, in the case of democracies, a threat to sovereignty means a threat to the ability of citizens to govern themselves. One of the most acute threats »

CRB: Against the Globalistas

Featured image This morning we continue with our preview of the new (Spring) issue of the Claremont Review of Books (subscribe here). Yesterday we took a look at Professor James Ceaser’s essay “Restoring the Constitution,” the first wallop in a one-two punch that is followed by John Marini’s “Abandoning the Constitution.” John Fonte’s book Sovereignty Or Submission: Will Americans Rule Themselves Or Be Ruled By Others? considers the epic struggle between the »

Taming international law, three proposals

Featured image No aspect of the modern leftist project poses more danger than the left’s approach to international law. By definition, international law is in tension with national sovereignty, but the “transnationalist” approach to international law advanced by leftists threatens to run roughshod over sovereignty. And, in the case of the United States, a threat to sovereignty means a threat to democracy — to the ability of Americans to govern themselves. In »

Taming International Law — Two Books

Featured image No aspcet of the modern leftist project poses more danger than the left’s approach to international law. By definition, interational law is in tension with national sovereignty, but the “transnationalist” approach to international law advanced by leftists threatens to run roughshod over sovereignty. And, in the case of the United States, a threat to sovereignty means a threat to democracy — to the ability of Americans to govern themselves. Two »