Another Extradition Play to the Gallery

Assessing the New Legislation on Extradition, with Andrew Southam, The Commentator, July 2, 2013. "Campaigners have long argued that Britain should have a “forum bar” that would limit the extradition of individuals from Britain to other jurisdictions. In April, they got their wish. The Crime and Courts Act introducing the forum bar, with other measures, received Royal Assent on 25th April 2013. The issue now is whether these measures improve the effectiveness of Britain’s extradition arrangements, including those with the United States, or whether they are a misguided attempt to play to the public gallery."

What New CPS Guidelines Tell Us About the UK Forum Bar

Extradition: CPS Guidelines & The Paradoxical Forum Bar, with Andrew Southam, The Commentator, November 15, 2012. "In late October, the Crown Prosecution Service, in a step that attracted little public attention, issued new, enforceable guidelines on how to prosecute alleged extradition crimes. The guidelines are interesting partly because they reinforce both modern extradition practice and longstanding tradition."

Extradition By The Numbers

The Numbers Behind the Extradition Controversy, with Andrew Southam, The Commentator, October 15, 2012. "But if you want to talk about numbers, consider this: the ratio between U.S. and U.K. extradition requests is not going up. It is going down. Since 2003, U.S. requests have outnumbered British ones by over two to one (130 to 54). By comparison, between 1964 and 1994, the U.S. filed almost three times as many extradition requests (301) in Britain as Britain (108) did in the U.S."

A Few Reasons Why the ATT Conference Failed

True Belief and True Failure at the United Nations, The Commentator, July 30, 2012. "What was missing was people who knew what they were doing. The ATT was never about banning; it was about regulating, a far more complex activity. And since far too many nations lack the administrative capacity to control their borders, they also lack the ability to negotiate a treaty controlling the arms trade."

The Problem of the A/B Treaty

The Meme of the ‘Weak’ Arms Trade Treaty, The Commentator, July 27, 2012. "WhatI find even more difficult to understand is the idea that the current treaty draft is somehow particularly weak. Of course the current draft would do nothing to stop Russia from arming Syria. But even if the NGOs got everything they want, that treaty would not stop Russia either. The error of the treaty’s supporters is this – they believe that better-drafted laws stop crime. Wrong. Cops on the beat stop crime. You can have the best-written laws in the world, but without enforcement, the law is merely words."

The Coming Anti-American Campaign

When the UN Arms Trade Treaty Fails, What Next?, The Commentator, May 31, 2012. "So what happens when the Treaty doesn’t work? You can bet that the ATT’s proponents aren’t going to accept that they were wrong. They’ll do three things. First, they’ll blame the U.S. (and Britain, but mostly the U.S.) for the Treaty’s failure. Second, they’ll argue – no matter who is actually doing the arms supplying, and to what conflict – that the U.S. and Britain are ‘setting a bad example’ by engaging in even the well-regulated sale of arms to fellow democracies. Third, they’ll assert that the treaty needs to be tightened up, and its review conferences will be an occasion for running battles between countries that are easily swayed by left-wing NGOs and British and American diplomats who don’t want to double down on failure."

Extremism: A Classic Irregular Verb

Are Republicans Crazy?, The Commentator, May 2, 2012. "My own view is that error and unreason are widely distributed across humanity, and any reasonably-sized group of people is likely to contain a similar amount of both. To an extent, that’s one reason I’m conservative: since people (including the very educated) are likely to get it wrong most of the time, I think it’s prudent to keep government as small as possible so as to limit its opportunities for inflicting damage. On the other hand, so much contemporary liberalism – dating back to the Progressives of the late-nineteenth century – is based on the idea that while the people are dopes, the elites are wise."

The Tappin Case, Round Two

Answers to Questions on the Tappin Extradition Case, The Commentator, March 22, 2012. "A few weeks ago, I wrote an article on extradition from the United Kingdom to the U.S., inspired by the furor over the case of Christopher Tappin. The gist of the article was that the U.K. wanted the 2003 U.S.-U.K. Extradition Treaty and the accompanying and broader Extradition Act of 2003, that the claims made about the unfairness of the Treaty are false, and that Ministers in Her Majesty’s Government should have the courage to say so. These are not popular views, in large part because they are rarely if ever expressed in Britain. So in the spirit of encouraging debate, I’ll return to the question, and present some new documents that critics of the Tappin case should read."

The Tappin Extradition Case

A Few Home Truths About Extradition from the United Kingdom, The Commentator, March 2, 2012. "As Mr. Grieve has conceded in one of his more sensible reflections, the Tappin case is controversial because Mr. Tappin appears to be an eminently respectable man. Unfortunately, it is possible for a man to appear to be respectable, and even to be the President of the Kent Golf Union, and still to be creditably accused of a serious crime. If Mr. Tappin is found innocent, there will be no public outcry in the U.S. But if the U.S. trial proceeds fairly – as I believe it will – and especially if he is found guilty, I trust there will be public and government recognition in Britain that the critics were wrong, and that the extradition system – and the American system – works."

Arms Trade Treaty Will Promote, Not Limit, Arms Sales

The U.N. Arms Trade Treaty Is A “Bulletproof” License to Sell, The Commentator, December 21, 2011. "The broader question is simple: how can a “bulletproof” treaty on the one hand require arms sellers to discriminate between good and bad regimes when supplying arms, and on the other hand demand that the treaty’s criteria not be applied in a discriminatory way? The answer is simple: this is not a “bulletproof” treaty. It is not even a serious one. In practice, the world’s bad actors will cite the treaty to justify selling arms anywhere they see fit, while the West’s activists will use it to try to curtail arms sales to democracies like Israel that they dislike."