You might say that ensuring punishment and the end to impunity is worth the $1 billion, but there is some point when even the end to impunity isn’t worth it. Or, more accurately, justice is not actually being achieved if the cost is so high. There are cheaper alternatives, by the way. Rwanda could itself punish the perpetrators or, as the ICTR has started to do, the ICTR could outsource to other countries (as it has started doing)

Seth Weinberger at “Security Dilemmas” weighs in with more typically intelligent analysis here.

Not surprisingly, the panelists had different views.Julian Ku advanced an argument that the President should exercise control over customary international law, in part because customary international law is based on state practice and because it is generally the executive who acts for the United States in establishing that practice. He suggested a rule of deference—perhaps even absolute deference—to the President’s interpretations of customary international law. One problem with this position, as Beth Stephens pointed out, is that it does not accord with what the Supreme Court actually did in Sosa. In the end, the Court agreed with the Bush Administration that brief arbitrary detentions do not violate any well-established norm of customary international law, but the Court engaged in its own analysis and showed no deference to the executive. There are at least two other objections. First, from an originalist point of view, the President had very little role to play in establishing the law of nations at the time of the Founding because that law rested on natural law rules deducible by courts rather than on state practice. Second, from a modern point of view, it is not only the practice of the United States that establishes customary international law, and unless the United States is a persistent objector during the creation of a new international law norm it will be bound by such a norm even if the President doesn’t like it.

David Moore, on the other hand, read Sosa as giving control over customary international law not to the executive but to Congress. Of course Congress has constitutional authority to “define and punish” offenses against the law of nations and is presumed also to be able to violate customary international law under the last-in-time rule. But Moore’s argument went beyond this, suggesting that the Sosa Court’s focus on congressional intent means that such intent should determine the extent to which customary international law is incorporated into the U.S. legal system more generally. Moore’s argument is original and provocative but in my view it misreads Sosa. First, it resurrects in somewhat different form the argument that the Supreme Court expressly rejected in Sosa—that Congress must expressly incorporate customary international law before courts may apply it. Second, it places too much reliance on the Sosa Court’s discussion of intent. In a case involving the interpretation of a statute, like the Alien Tort Statute, a focus on congressional intent is perfectly appropriate. That does not mean, however, that congressional intent has anything to say about the place of customary international law in the constitutional structure—its place under Article II’s take care clause, Article III’s grant of federal question jurisdiction, or Article VI’s supremacy clause, for example.

It was to those questions that I turned in my presentation, arguing that Sosa’s approach is to treat the incorporation of customary international law not in an all-or-nothing manner, but issue by issue, an interpretation I advanced in a previous article on Sosa. I argued that the original understanding was that the President is bound by customary international law under Article II, that cases arising under the law of nations are within the federal question grant of Article III, and (perhaps most controversially) that customary international law should bind the states under the supremacy clause.

Beth Stephens was the voice of reason and practicality. Among other things, she discussed Sosa’s impact on the corporate cases, arguing that the violations they allege are clearly actionable under Sosa. She also pointed out that the First Congress recognized both that private actors not acting under color of state law could violate some rules of the law of nations and that aiders and abettors of international law violations could be held liable. One such case, In re South African Apartheid Litigation, is currently pending before the Second Circuit and we will soon see if she is right.

According to survey the younger generation are militaristic. They are far more likely to support military action in Iraq, and more comfortable authorizing use of force to maintain oil supplies, prevent famines, or restore law and order with failing governments. As the survey says, “it is older Americans, not young people, who typically show the greatest wariness about using military force.” They also are more “cosmopolitan” in the sense that they have a stronger global perspective. They strongly favor the United Nations, are more willing to cede American power to other countries, are committed to compromise with allies, want to improve the living standards in developing nations, and favor free trade. “[Y]ounger age cohorts are not only more likely to be defenders of internatioanal agreements but also to express concern about the protection of innocents abroad…. [W]hile younger people believe America’s best approach to foreign policy is through cooperation and compromise, they also see the use of military force as a tool in the foreign policy toolbox – a practical and tough-minded way to achieve a compassionate end.”

At the other extreme, the oldest generation are skeptical of military force and appear to view the world through the prism of history. They are far more skeptical of the military action in Iraq, and are deeply wary of authorizing the use of force to maintain oil supplies, prevent famines, or restore law and order. They distrust the United Nations, are skeptical of free trade, and are far less likely to favor compromise with allies or ceding America’s superpower status. They appear to have a stronger conception of duty, expressing more willingness to fight for our country, right or wrong. As the survey suggests, the oldest generation’s views “are shaped by the events and experiences they share such as World War II, Vietnam, and the end of the Cold War.”

Here is an edited version of some of the results:

OP7 … the Human Rights Council shall consist of 47 Member States which shall be elected directly and individually by secret ballots by the majority of the members of the General Assembly. The membership shall be based on equitable geographic distribution and seats shall be distributed as follows among regional groups: Ahcan Group 13; Asian Group 13; Eastern European Group 6; GRULAC 8; WEOG 7. The members of the Council will serve for a period of three years and shall not be eligible for immediate re-election after two consecutive terms.

OP8 … the membership in the Council shall be open to all Member States of the United Nations. When electing members of the Council, Member States shall take into account the candidates’ contribution to the promotion and protection of human rights and their voluntary pledges and commitments made thereto. The General Assembly, by a two-thirds majority of the members present and voting, may suspend the rights of membership in the Council of a member of the Human Rights Council that commits gross and systematic violations of human rights.

0P9 Members elected to the Council shall uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights, fully cooperate with the Council, and be reviewed under the universal periodic review mechanism during their term of membership.

OPlO The Council shall meet regularly throughout the year and schedule not fewer than three sessions per year, including a main session, for a total duration of no less than ten weeks, and shall be able to hold special sessions when needed at the request of a Member of the Council with the support of one-third of the membership of the Council.

Although the new Council would be substantially better than the existing Commission — it would meet more often and require periodic review of members states’ human-rights practices — the draft compromise has one glaring weakness: it does not require a 2/3 majority of the General Assembly for election to the Council, leaving open the possibility that serial human-rights abusers could continue to be elected.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International both support adopting the draft compromise, although they acknowledge its limitations. The U.S. is more disasstisifed– and is threatening to re-open negotiations as a result. But as Scott Paul points out at Bolton Watch, the U.S. has only itself — or, more precisely, its Ambassador, John Bolton — to blame for the absence of the 2/3 majority requirement:

First, after Anne Patterson successfully included the 2/3 provision in the negotiating text for the September World Summit, Bolton blew the consensus apart by submitting 750 amendments to the text, many of them of questionable importance to U.S. foreign policy and also deeply offensive to developing countries.

Then, in December, Bolton proposed that the permanent five members of the Security Council should get permanent seats on the HRC. There were two problems with this idea. First, since that would mean China and Russia automatically get seats, it implied that the U.S.is more interested in membership for itself than credible standards in general. Second, no other countries supported the idea. Instead of working towards achievable U.S. goals, Bolton squandered a fair amount of political capital by pushing this non-starter.

In recent weeks, Bolton still did not lobby for the 2/3 provision. Instead, he promoted his own worthless and unachievable proposal: that countries under Security Council sanction would not be allowed to serve. Today, that would exclude a whopping two countries, Sudan and Cote d’Ivoire, from the HRC. Even in the closing days, a united front with Europe in support of the 2/3 majority would probably have been enough to see it through. Secretary Rice was doing her best to advance the 2/3 provision in capitals around the world, and a little support in New York would have gone a long way.

These three were Bolton’s publicly acknowledged gaffes during this process, but there were many subtle failures, too. For example, over the last three months of 2005, when negotiations after the Summit were really taking shape, Bolton rarely bothered to show up. Instead, he spent his time railing against the UN’s shortcomings in the press and on the Hill, leaving Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Mark Lagon to hold down the fort. Lagon did well, but without high-level representation, the U.S. was seriously handicapped in the negotiations.

At this point, re-opening negotiations would most likely do more harm than good — “death by 1,000 cuts,” in the words of Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch. So although the new Council would not be perfect, it may now be the best we can do. One thing is clear: the least acceptable option of all is a return to the status quo ante.

At the suggestion of one of the emails, I will post the information in mid-March as soon as the hiring season is over.

Kenneth Anderson warned that if the Bush Administration does not institutionalize the war on terror, that war will not outlast the Administration. Morton Halperin agreed, characterizing the Administration’s unilateralism as a “fundamental political misjudgment.”

John Hutson, a retired admiral and now dean of the Franklin Pierce Law Center, warned that if we are not careful we may lose the war on terror, and cautioned that “If we lose our soul . . . we ultimately will have lost the war on terror.” War is never a solution by itself, he said, but only buys time to develop other solutions, adding “we need to figure out why they hate us.” Andrew McCarthy replied that it doesn’t matter why they hate us, because knowing would not change our strategy or objective, which is to break the ability of radical Islam to project force.

John Yoo moderated the panel. Unfortunately he remained silent on the advisability of executive unilateralism in the war on terror, but you can buy his book.

• First, the children who went to school at Manzanar wanted to pledge allegiance to the United States flag at the start of class each morning. But there was no flag, so the teacher had the children draw American flags and post it in the corner of the school room. Each morning they would pledge allegiance to the children’s drawings of the American flag.

• Second, the Manzanar high school played local teams in high school football. Every game was a home game, for the “Manzanites” were not allowed to travel outside the camp.

• Third, many Japanese Americans were committed to fighting for the United States in the Second World War. These volunteers established the 442nd Regimental Combat team, a Japanese American volunteer unit. One of those volunteers, Sadao Munemori, posthumously received the Medal of Honor for falling on a grenade and saving others in his regiment. His mother received the medal on his behalf from within the confines of the Manzanar internment camp.

As he did at the 2004 annual meeting of the American Society of International Law, Justice Scalia pointed out that foreign law is often invoked selectively. Yes, a great many nations do not allow the execution of minors, but a great many also criminalize abortion. Scalia also linked the use of foreign legal materials to what he called the “living Constitution paradigm.” Invoking Justice Holmes, he characterized the law of international human rights as the new “brooding omnipresence in the sky,” portending a return to what Scalia called the “bad old days before Erie.”

During a panel discussion that followed Justice Scalia’s speech, Tom Goldstein (SCOTUSblog) suggested that the current debate over the use of foreign law is a proxy for the debate over originalism. Breyer and other believers in the “living Constitution” are willing to look to foreign materials to help them fashion solutions for modern problems, while Scalia rejects such materials because he believes that all the answers must be found in the original understanding.

If Goldstein is right, a curious thing about this debate is that rejection of foreign and international law is associated with originalism. The “bad old days before Erie” included the 18th Century world of the Framers. They believed in a “brooding omnipresence in the sky” called the general common law, of which the law of nations was a part. The original understanding was that this law of nations was part of U.S. law in myriad ways, and as Professor Sarah Cleveland has shown in her thoroughly researched article “Our International Constitution”, the use of international law to interpret the Constitution stretches back to the Marshall Court.

Perhaps, then, it is really Justice Breyer who is being faithful to the original understanding of foreign and international law’s place in our constitutional system and its relevance to constitutional interpretation and Justice Scalia whose break with that tradition represents–dare I say it–“living Constitutionalism.”