Koh Cloture Passes

I am delighted to report (from Foreign Policy's blog, passed along to me by our colleague Catherine Powell) that the cloture vote in the U.S. Senate on the nomination of Harold Hongju Koh to be the State Department's Legal Adviser has passed. The posting states:

'Cloture passed on a 65-31 vote,' a Congressional source relays at 11:30am. 'There was applause in the Senate gallery after the vote was announced. Republicans are threatening to exercise their right to use all 30 hours of floor debate before permitting a final vote, so Koh may not be formally confirmed until tomorrow.'

Until that final vote we IntLawGrrls, through our timer above, will keep on counting.

Scholars state detention changes

Seems everyone has notions these days about how to close the detention camp for terrorist suspects that the Bush Administration opened on January 11, 2002. Some are included in a report by a coalition of more than 20 organizations, entitled Liberty and Security: Recommendations for the Next Administration and Congress. IntLawGrrls’ own Fiona de Londras, in an excellent post, recently offered hers. I’ve my own, too, and will post them in due course. They begin with a pre-eminent concern, on which I posted more than a year ago. In closing Guantánamo as he has promised to do, the new President also must close “Guantánamo” – the abusive policies of detention, interrogation, and rendition now given that metaphoric label even if in point of fact they occur far away from the 45 square miles that comprise the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay. (12/08 photo of Camp Justice, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, by Diane Marie Amann)
Today’s post is intended to point readers to the Scholars’ Statement of Principles for the New President on U.S. Detention Policy: An Agenda for Change. Drafted by our colleague Catherine Powell, also author of a human rights Blueprint on which we’ve posted, and signed by more than 2 dozen other scholars, among them yours truly, IntLawGrrl Jenny Martinez, and our colleagues Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, Sarah H. Cleveland, Deborah Pearlstein, Hope Metcalf, Martha Minow, Judith Resnik, Margaret L. Satterthwaite, and Ruti Teitel. The Statement begins with an explication of how “the existing detention system,” -- “viewed as unprincipled, unreliable, and illegitimate” -- “undermines our national security.” It then sets forth 4 principles on which any new policy ought to be based:
► Observe the rule of law
► Liberty is the norm
► Individualized process
► Transparency
Then follows a host of recommendations for the new administration. As one would expect, it calls on the President to “Close Guantánamo” – to close it in the broader sense. Detainees who can be released are to be released; those should be prosecuted are to be transferred to the United States for prosecution before “established U.S. courts,” and not the military commissions. The Statement urges the Administration to attend to U.S. detention at other sites, “primarily in Iraq and Afghanistan.” It calls for an end to extraordinary rendition, and it admits no tolerance for abuse during detention or interrogation.
In short, the Statement's a document essential to thorough consideration of what to do to undo post-9/11 detention policies.

Blueprint to bring human rights home

Soon after the election, IntLawGrrl Connie de la Vega posted a moving call for the United States to reaffirm the commitment it made 60 years ago by endorsing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Just before the election, the American Constitution Society released a road map on how America might do just that.
In 33 pages, Human Rights at Home: A Domestic Policy Blueprint for the New Administration traces the history of the U.S. commitment and recent shortcomings evident in, for example, the mistreatment of persons detained in the wake of 9/11 and in the failure to protect its own nationals in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. (It's a litany not unlike that which I set forth in this essay, published earlier this year.) The ACS report, written by our colleague Catherine Powell (right) of Fordham Law School, then recommends ways that the new President could set the United States back on a human rights path. A few examples:
► Issue an Executive Order (proposed text at Appendix B) reconstituting the Interagency Working Group on Human Rights, 1st established in 1998, as a means to coordinate federal governmental "promotion and respect of human rights and the implementation of human rights obligations in U.S. domestic policy";
► "Seize opportunities" to act soon to reaffirm obligations the United States already has shouldered by continuing reporting dialogue respecting the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (subject of an IntLawGrrls series);
► Establish 2 types of human rights bodies, the 1st the Interagency Working Group, which would implement human rights domestically, and the 2d, a new, nonpartisan, independent body that would monitor compliance with human rights laws; and
► Support ratification of human rights treaties, with all necessary implementing legislation, such as, to cite a few examples, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (also the subject of an IntLawGrrls series), the American Convention on Human Rights, the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
I'm proud to have served on the Blueprint Advisory Board along with a host of other academics, NGO representatives, and former government officials, all named in Appendix A.
Looking forward now to seeing some of those recommendations take root here at home.