Supreme Court Nomination: Will International Law Be an Issue?

To international lawyers (as well as to many US lawyers, presumably) George W. Bush's recent nominee for the Supreme Court, Harrier Miers, is hardly known. Anthony Clark Arend, Professor at Georgetown, has rightly urged the Senate to enquire about her position on international law issues during confirmation hearings:

"Over the past seven months, Miers has served as White House Counsel. Her predecessor, Alberto Gonzales, had been involved in a number of extremely controversial decisions relating to international law-- in particular, questions relating to the status and treatment of detainees in the war on terror. Since Miers assumed the White House Counsel's position, there has been little discussion of her approach to these questions. [...] While there will be many issues that the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee will raise in her confirmation hearings, her views about international law-- the Geneva Conventions, the Torture Convention-- should be among them."

After last year's torture scandals, any White House Counsel should be required to prove a clean record on matters concerning international law.