[Steve Charnovitz is an associate professor of law at The George Washington University Law School. He blogs at the International Economic Law and Policy Blog.] On October 31, 2008, I made a presentation at the ASIL’s Tillar House of a proposal for an “International Court of Justice Decisions Implementation Act.” My proposal is an outgrowth of my essay in the Agora...
Adding to the fortune-telling articles concerning the policies of the incoming Obama Administration, the Wall Street Journal states that the current administration's policies will go through the transition "largely intact." However, I think it is just too early to tell. The WSJ article begins: President-elect Barack Obama is unlikely to radically overhaul controversial Bush administration intelligence policies, advisers say, an approach that...
Turns out rumors of a new Obama Administration-developed security court may have been greatly exaggerated – or at least premature. The blogosphere was briefly abuzz yesterday after an AP wire story in the morning reported that some of the Guantanamo detainees “might have to go before a new court designed especially to handle sensitive national security cases, according to [unnamed]...
According to news reports, President-elect Obama is going to take major steps to end President Bush's system of trial via military commissions. It sounds...
I was in Miami for the weekend speaking at a conference sponsored by the American Bar Association and the International Bar Association on the topic of mass claims in developing countries. Many lawyers in the room were defense counsel for prominent corporations subject to new claims for violations of international or foreign law. There were also plenty of...
Awesome: Jews are no strangers to the idea of persecution and for years, Jewish groups have been at the forefront of the movement to save Darfur save Darfur, a region in western Sudan, which is awash in cultural genocide. Today, they join with Tents of Hope on the National Mall to show solidarity with the refugees of Janjaweed aggression. Sixth & I...
In his recent post, Julian wrote that the secret U.S. military raids in Syria, Pakistan, and other countries may be (in his view) easily justifiable under U.S. law, but that the issue of legality is much harder to answer as a matter of international law - indeed, it would have to be some theory of preemptive self-defense. Expect to see denunciations...
As discussions of a(nother) bailout for Detroit automakers continue, one question that intrigues me is whether any Opinio Juris readers drive Detroit-made cars - i.e., cars made by the Big Three US automakers? Please feel free to indicate in the comments. My wife and I own two Hondas, one of them a 1993 Honda Civic that we bought used from the...
Two items of Sudan news to report. First, the Sudanese government has lawyered up, hiring the prominent British firm Eversheds LLP to represent it at the ICC. I wonder if that means Bashir is expecting the Pre-Trial Chamber to issue the arrest warrant; although Article 19 of the Rome Statute is not the picture of clarity, it seems to allow...
Critics of the U.S. war on terrorism often deride it as a bad metaphor or an excuse to conduct controversial detentions, interrogations and military trials. But what the Pentagon refers to as the "Global War on Terrorism" (GWOT) has many of the characteristics of a typical armed conflict, even outside of the main battlefield in Afghanistan. As the NYT reports: The...
Today is the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Night of the Broken Glass, during which 92 Jews were murdered, 25-30,000 Jews were arrested and deported to concentration camps, and more than 200 synagogues and Jewish businesses were destroyed. I was in Vienna for the 60th anniversary. Late that night, I was walking through the Heldenplatz, where Hitler announced the...
Something that my international business law students often have trouble grasping is that the Chinese economy remains enormously dependent upon exports to the rest of the world and to the US in particular. On account of so much attention, often in undergraduate political science classes and elsewhere, I suspect, to the "rise of China and India," my students, and perhaps...
