Edward Lucas, the Central and Eastern Europe correspondent for the Economist has an article in London’s Daily Mail (Hat tip: Geographic Travels) that sounds like it should be in the “Truth is stranger than fiction” file. It starts off with a discussion of how Russia is responding to its birth-rate that is well below the rate of renewal. ...
[Ariel Meyerstein received his J.D. from Boalt Hall (2006) and is currently a PhD candidate, Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program. His recent scholarship includes, "Between Law and Culture: Rwanda's Gacaca and Postcolonial Legality," 32 Law and Social Inquiry 467-508 (2007), "Transitional Justice and Post-Conflict Israel/Palestine: Assessing the Applicability of the Truth Commission Paradigm," 38 Case Western Reserve Journal of International...
Transnational Law & Contemporary Problems has just released a symposium issue on "National Security: Detention, War Powers, and Anti-Proliferation" edited by my friend at Iowa, Tung Yin. The issue includes articles by our blogging colleagues Diane Amann, Steven Vladeck, and Tung himself, all of which are worth checking out. I also want to call attention to the article...
Grist, a website dedicated to environmental news and commentary, has released its list of the world's 15 greenest cities. Despite the unconscionable omission of Auckland, I present them here:1. Reyjavik, Iceland 2. Portland, Oregon 3. Curitiba, Brazil 4. Malmo, Sweden 5. Vancouver, Canada 6. Copenhagen, Denmark 7. London, England 8. San Francisco, California 9. Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador 10....
I normally look forward (if that is the right expression) to movies about the Holocaust. But I don't know how I feel about this one:German and Israeli filmmakers have come together to tackle the subject of the Holocaust for the first time in an ambitious screen adaptation of a bestselling novel. Their groundbreaking collaboration over the highly sensitive topic has...
Not a good week for U.N. peacekeepers. A confidential U.N. report described in this Washington Post story concludes that Pakistani peacekeepers in Congo have been helping steal that country's gold. According to the U.N., the blue helmets only helped local plunderers, while Human Rights Watch says they were directly involved in the looting. But that seems virtually harmless compared to...
Here's something I didn't know: Israeli descendants of German survivors of the Holocaust are eligible for German citizenship. And they are getting it in large numbers:Holding her brand-new German passport, Avital Direktor, 29, of Azor, just had to laugh. "What a crazy world," she thought to herself. "Germany's soil is drenched with my family's blood, and in spite of...
One of the most fundamental norms in international law is that a state cannot acquire territory through the use of force. This is understood to be an implication of the U.N. Charter’s ban on force in Art. 2(4): if war is illegal, then benefiting from it should also be illegal. Few major norms are as widely agreed on. Indeed, many...
Speaking of releasing prisoners (see my post below)… a terrorist formerly held at Guantanamo bay died in a gunfight with Pakistani soldiers this week. He blew himself up rather than be captured, suggesting he had valuable intelligence to hide. The gentleman was released from Gitmo a few years ago. He immediately rejoined the jihad, terrorizing the Afghan-Pakistan border area. Notable...
P.X. Kelley and Robert F. Turner have an op-ed in today’s Washington Post on the most recent twist in the Administration's torture policy that is a must-read. Their essay begins:One of us was appointed commandant of the Marine Corps by President Ronald Reagan; the other served as a lawyer in the Reagan White House and has vigorously defended the constitutionality...
Many international lawyers, particularly those involved in human rights, maintain that for certain serious international crimes, amnesty, exile, plea bargains and other forms of negotiated justice are impermissible. This is so even when the alternative to amnesty be the perpetuation of a murderous regime, or end a bloody civil war. In this view – I think the dominant one –...
While working on an article on Fourth Generation Warfare (see also this) and international law, I have started reading various blogs that are concerned with the decentralization of military force, the evolution of security threats, and of the techniques for addressing those threats. In case Opinio Juris readers are interested in these (or related) issues, let me note a...
