Dickinson blogs on `Opinio Juris'
<p>Professor <a href="http://www.law.asu.edu/Apps/Faculty/Faculty.aspx?individual_id=57267">L… Dickinson</a>, faculty director of the Center for Transnational Public-Private Governance at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, recently wrote a piece for the Web site, <em>Opinio Juris</em>, about Harold Hongju Koh's appointment to a federal agency.</p><separator></separator><p>Dickinson said far-right bloggers' attempts to "smear" Koh, the Dean of Yale Law School who has been nominated as the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State, "have gone from silly to absurd." She said critics have spread "patently false" rumors that Koh wanted Islamic law to govern cases in U.S. court, and that his "transnational legal views threaten fundamental American principles of representative government."</p><separator></separator><p>"Koh's transnationalist legal perspective does no such thing," Dickinson asserted in a blog titled, "State Department Legal Adviser Nominee Harold Hongju Koh Holds Mainstream Legal Views." "It is a simple recognition of our legal interdependence with the rest of the world-traditional, not novel; not a surrender of sovereignty but a recognition that we must engage diplomatically to assert our interests."</p><separator></separator><p>To read the full article in <em>Opinio Juris</em>, a forum for informed discussion and lively debate about international law and international relations, click here.</p><separator></separator><p>Dickinson's work focuses on human rights, national security, foreign affairs privatization, and qualitative empirical approaches to international law. She is currently working on a monograph, <em>Outsourcing War and Peace</em>, to be published by Yale University Press. The book examines the increasing privatization of military, security, and foreign aid functions of government, considers the impact of this trend on core public values, and outlines mechanism for protecting these values in an era of privatization.</p><separator></separator><p>Dickinson is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law, and co-organizer of a Collaborative Research Network on Empirical Approaches to International Human Rights Law, convened under the auspices of the Law & Society Association.</p><separator></separator><p><span style="font-size: 9pt; color: black; font-family: Tahoma" lang="EN">Janie Magruder, <a href="mailto:Jane.Magruder@asu.edu"><font color="#0000ff">Jane.Magruder@asu.edu</font></a><br />(480) 727-9052<br />Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law</span></p>