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April 30, 2009
Video of Torture in the UAE
ABC's Brian Ross has obtained a shocking video of torture on the desert sands, apparently conducted with UAE police officers assisting a member of the royal family.
Posted by Anupam Chander on April 30, 2009 at 11:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 20, 2009
Conference in Honor of International Law Legend Michael Reisman This Friday at Yale
Professor Reisman is the Myres S. McDougal Professor of International Law at Yale Law School, where he has been on the faculty since 1965. He has been a visiting professor in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Berlin, Basel, Paris, and Geneva. He is a Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science and a former member of its Executive Council. From 1992-1995, he served as a member and subsequently chairman of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
Leading international law scholars will come from the United States and around the world to participate in the April 24 conference. The event will begin with introductory remarks by Acting Dean Kate Stith at 8:30 a.m. and will be followed by two morning panels on Jurisprudence and The Use of Force. The afternoon will open with a panel on Trade, Investment, and Dispute Settlement and end with one on Human Rights. Judge Rosalyn Higgins, former President of the International Court of Justice, will give the closing remarks at 5:30 p.m. The conference will conclude with a reception in the Alumni Reading Room at 6:00 p.m.
The panel discussions are free and open to the public.
Posted by Anupam Chander on April 20, 2009 at 03:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Suffering, Redefined
"The waterboard, which inflicts no pain or actual harm whatsoever, does not, in our view inflict 'severe pain or suffering' [prohibited by 18 U.S.C. 2340]... The waterboard is simply a controlled acute episode, lacking the connotation of a protracted period of time generally given to suffering."
The C.I.A. officers used waterboarding at least 83 times in August 2002 against Abu Zubaydah, according to a 2005 Justice Department legal memorandum. Abu Zubaydah has been described as a Qaeda operative.
... The 2005 memo also says that the C.I.A. used waterboarding 183 times in March 2003 against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The fact that Zubaydah and Mohammed inflicted wanton death and countless acts of prolonged suffering on others does not license our use of such medieval tortures.
Posted by Anupam Chander on April 20, 2009 at 09:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 13, 2009
Defending Dean Koh and Judge Wilkinson from Borking Attempt
The American Enterprise Institute's Norman Ornstein has a powerful rejoinder to the furious attacks on Dean Koh, linking them to the attacks on Judge Wilkinson (of which, I'm sorry to say, I was not previously aware).
Herewith a sample of the argument:
To know Koh is to know that he is as smart and deep as any legal scholar in the country, and also to know that he loves the country and the Constitution as deeply as anybody. He has strong views--including that the United States should abide by the Geneva Conventions that we championed and signed and that the U.S. should not allow torture, putting him in the same camp as that dangerous radical Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). He also believes that there are times when the courts should pay attention to what other countries have done in their legal systems and legal rulings, putting him in the same camp as that dangerous left-winger Antonin Scalia.
To pick one example, when Scalia dissented from a ruling in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission that upheld anonymous electioneering, he referred to laws in Australia, Canada and Britain that blocked anonymous election speech to bolster his argument.
Or we can put Koh in the same camp as that dangerous radical Alexander Hamilton, who wrote in Federalist 63: "An attention to the judgment of other nations is important to every government ... in doubtful cases, particularly where the national councils may be warped by some strong passion, or momentary interest, the presumed or known opinion of the impartial world may be the best guide that can be followed. ... [H]ow many errors and follies would [America] not have avoided, if the justice and propriety of her measures had in every instance been previously tried by the light in which they would probably appear to the unbiased part of mankind?"
Posted by Anupam Chander on April 13, 2009 at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 07, 2009
Iraqi Gays Face Murder
Timothy Williams and Tareq Maher of the New York Times offer a sad report:
The relative freedom of a newly democratic Iraq and the recent improvement in security have allowed a gay subculture to flourish here. The response has been swift and deadly.
In the past two months, the bodies of as many as 25 boys and men suspected of being gay have turned up in the huge Shiite enclave ofSadr City, the police and friends of the dead say. Most have been shot, some multiple times. Several have been found with the word “pervert” in Arabic on notes attached to their bodies, the police said.
“Three of my closest friends have been killed during the past two weeks alone,” said Basim, 23, a hairdresser. “They had been planning to go to a cafe away from Sadr City because we don’t feel safe here, but they killed them on the way. I had planned to go with them, but fortunately I didn’t.”
Basim, who preferred to be called “Basima” — the feminine version of his name — wears his hair long for Iraq. It falls to just below the ear. His ears are pierced, uncommon for Iraqi males. White makeup covers his face, a popular look for gay men in Sadr City who say they prefer light skin.
Posted by Anupam Chander on April 7, 2009 at 06:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 03, 2009
Ted Olson, Top Republican Lawyer, Endorses Harold Koh
Theodore Olson, the top conservative attorney who served under Reagan and George W. Bush, dismissed attacks from the right on Obama’s choice for a top legal post, defending the pick as a “man of great integrity.”
...Olson, who argued the Bush side in Bush v. Gore and was solicitor general under Bush, carries great weight among conservatives, so his defense of Koh is likely to take the steam out of the right’s campaign. Koh worked under Olson in the Reagan Justice Department.
“I have the greatest respect for Harold Koh,” Olson said. “He’s a brilliant scholar and a man of great integrity.
Reported on Plum Line by Greg Sargent.Posted by Anupam Chander on April 3, 2009 at 07:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 02, 2009
Dean Harold Koh on Sharia
The right wing media has falsely attacked Dean Harold Koh of the Yale Law School as someone who would impose Sharia law on the United States.
Glen Beck claims
that Dean Koh would place “Sharia law over our Constitution.” Daniel Pipes titles his blog post
denouncing Koh, “Harold Koh, Promoter of Shari'a?”
These right wing pundits seem, as usual, to have
little concern for the facts. Dean Koh was Assistant Secretary of State for
Human Rights, Democracy, and Labor in the Clinton Administration—I do not
recall that period as being one where the State Department sought to bring
Sharia to the U.S.
Others have already addressed the false claim that
Dean Koh voiced willingness to look to Sharia law as part of foreign law in a Yale
Club of Connecticut talk (he actually, as the New York Times reported, “said that there were ‘common
underlying concepts” in many legal systems around the world”).
In the 71 articles penned by Harold Koh that appear
in the Westlaw law review database, there is but one article that mentions
Sharia (I tried a number of variations in the spelling of that term). This article is titled “Restoring America’s
Human Rights Reputation” and appears in the Cornell International Law Journal
after a lecture he delivered at that law school.
In that article, he denounces the government of Iran
for “impos[ing] a strict form of Sharia law that denies basic rights to women
and minorities.” (p. 69) The full
passage is even more clear about his aversion to fundamentalist mullahs:
The human rights situation in Iran remains increasingly disturbing. Although a great percentage of the Iranian people support democratic reform, the country remains in the hands of the conservative clerics, who closely monitor and restrict the opposition and the press, punish human rights defenders, and impose a strict form of Sharia law that denies basic rights to women and minorities.
Here, Dean Koh shows the diplomat’s ability to
separate the people of the country from their oppressive leaders. Like
President Obama, who recently addressed the people of Iran in a Persian New
Year greeting, Koh understands that many people in Iran would prefer democratic
reform. Furthermore, he is concerned about free speech, denouncing Iran for “shut[ing] down two independent
newspapers and block[ing] access to many media internet sites.”
In a footnote, he quotes from the
State Department report on Iran:
As the Iran Report notes:
Human rights problems included severe restriction of the right of citizens to change their government peacefully unjust executions after reportedly unfair trials; disappearances; torture and severe officially sanctioned punishments such as death by stoning; flogging; excessive use of force against demonstrators; violence by vigilante groups with ties to the government; poor prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention; lack of judicial independence; lack of fair public trials; political prisoners and detainees; severe restrictions on civil liberties including speech, press, assembly, association, movement, and privacy; severe restrictions on freedom of religion; official corruption; violence and legal and societal discrimination against women, ethnic and religious minorities, and homosexuals; incitement to anti-Semitism; severe restriction of workers' rights, including freedom of association and the right to organize and bargain collectively; and child labor.
U.S. Dep't of State, Iran: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2006 intro. (2007), available at http:// www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2006/78852.htm.
In the article, he criticizes the human rights
abuses in North Korea and elsewhere (including Saudi Arabia), but notes that
our own ability to criticize others has been undermined by abuses such as Abu
Ghraib and Guantanamo. He seeks to restore our leadership on human rights in
the world.
Of course, the right wing will remain unsatisfied by
this mention of Sharia. They will complain that his aversion is to “a strict
form of Sharia law,” and not a denunciation of all Sharia law itself. Such a
denunciation would be remarkably obtuse. It would alienate the people whom we
most need to staunch global terrorism. Equally important, it would suggest that
no liberal interpretations of Sharia are possible. As Madhavi Sunder has shown
in her Yale Law Journal article, Piercing the Veil, this is false. Women around
the world are challenging fundamentalist interpretations of the Koran. Like all
the great religions, Islam too is open to interpretation, some liberal, others quite
oppressive. (For novices like me, Karen Armstrong’s introduction to Islam is
also helpful on this front.)
As Dahlia Lithwick writes, if we allow such
outrageously false claims to be made about human rights leaders like Harold
Koh, when shall we speak?
Posted by Anupam Chander on April 2, 2009 at 09:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack
April 01, 2009
Dean Harold Koh’s Nomination to the State Department
President Obama has nominated Dean Harold Koh of
Yale Law School to serve as the Legal Advisor to the State Department.
The Legal Advisor is the nation’s top international lawyer, advising the
Secretary of State on international security law, international labor law,
human rights law, and the legal aspects of international engagements.
It is hard to imagine a person more qualified to
fill the position. Dean Koh clerked on the D.C. Circuit and on the Supreme
Court. He practiced law at Covington and Burling. He served in the Reagan
Administration as an Attorney-Advisor in the Office of Legal Counsel, and then
returned to serve as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights,
and Labor in the Clinton Administration. He is a summa cum laude graduate of
Harvard College, a Marshall Scholar at Oxford, and a graduate (like President
Obama) of Harvard Law School. He has written extensively on human
rights (including the rights of persons with intellectual disabilities),
democracy, and international business transactions. This last subject will
prove especially helpful as we grapple with our global financial crisis.
Perhaps even more important than these academic credentials are his strength of
character and commitment to the law. In the early 1990s, he led the struggle
against the detention of Haitian refugees, including individuals with HIV, in
Guantanamo (see Brandt Goldstein’s superb book, Storming the Court).
Dean Koh’s nomination has come under strident
attack from right wing editorialists and bloggers, such as those for the National Review. This is hardly
surprising. Dean Koh, after all, represents the polar opposite of their
views. These are the folks who argued strenuously for the Imperial Presidency,
for a president who can run foreign policy without any oversight from the
coordinate branches, even imprisoning and torturing as he sees fit. In
denouncing Koh, the National Review
characteristically commends instead the views of John Bolton, who famously
alienated the rest of the world as America's top diplomat.
Dean Koh’s book, the National Security Constitution, showed that the Constitution
requires checks and balances in foreign affairs, not in domestic affairs alone.
The executive-can't-be-bothered-by-the-other-branches types would white out
parts of the Constitution: consider the Treaty Clause, the Supremacy Clause, the
War Powers Clause, the power to raise Armies, to offer just a few
examples.
Some detractors mistakenly claim that Dean Koh
would sacrifice the U.S. Constitution to international law. Dean Koh has always
sought to further the U.S. Constitution. Consider that document’s own words, in
a sentence that has come to be known as the Supremacy Clause:
"This Constitution, and the Laws of the
United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made,
or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the
supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby,
any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the contrary
notwithstanding." The very first sentence of the Declaration of
Independence pays "decent respect to the opinions of mankind."
From 1776 and through much of our history, we were not the unilateralist,
go-it-alone types, indifferent to world opinion, relying only on coalitions of
the coerced and bribed. Instead, we were the ones who have built up the
international institutions that exist today. These institutions are now engaged
in peace-keeping, managing refugee populations, and immunizing children against
preventable illnesses. In my article, Globalization
and Distrust, published in the Yale Law Journal, I demonstrate that international
law operates through (and consistently with) national democratic processes,
permitting review, revision, and rejection through such processes. Indeed,
international law and coordination will be even more necessary as we grapple
with the problems of our increasingly globalized world.
As President Obama meets in London to seek help
in pulling the world out of an economic tailspin and in regulating global
finance, the value of global cooperation seems self-evident.
Dean Koh has the intelligence, wisdom, and
courage for us to rely upon him for advice as to America's legal engagements
with the world. The fact that his nomination has drawn such a sharp response
from the zealots who have wrecked America's standing in the world, justified
torture, and waged war recklessly only further confirms the wisdom of the
choice.
Update: A commentator below threatens me with deportation.
Posted by Anupam Chander on April 1, 2009 at 03:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
