A note to our readers: I inadvertently jumped the gun a bit in my earlier post about the Security Council and raised Professor Michael Glennon's YJIL article, The Blank Prose Crime of Aggression, on which Kevin has also commented. We imagine that some readers will also want to weigh in. It turns out that in March, we will be discussing...
I want to offer two thoughts on Glennon's article, which -- though I am generally skeptical of the ICC's attempts to define the crime -- I find anything but convincing. The first has to do with his central thesis: that the Special Working Group on the Crime of Aggression's proposed definition of aggression "would constitute a crime in blank prose...
Cross-posted at Balkinization Ok, the headline is a bit misleading. It’s only two justices – Scalia and Thomas – who, in dissenting from a denial of certiorari by the Supreme Court this week, argued that the Court should settle once and for all whether detainees can invoke the Geneva Conventions in federal court. Lyle Denniston, as usual, reports the dissent-from-denial here,...
Many thanks to Peter, Kal and Scott for their very thoughtful comments. As Peter notes, The Art and Craft of International Law focuses more on process and design than on doctrinal issues. Whether or not he is correct that international environmental law lacks common principles or norms that give it substantive coherence, the premise of my book is that it...
[Major John C. Dehn is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Law, US Military Academy, West Point, NY. He currently teaches International Law and Constitutional and Military Law. He is writing in his personal capacity and his views do not necessarily represent the views of the Department of Defense, the US Army, or the US Military Academy.] The post-Boumediene habeas...
See it here. As usual, it's full of great panels. Also, Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin of the Canadian Supreme Court and U.S. Department of State Legal Adviser Harold Koh will each give a keynote address. A list of program highlights is here. And, by the way, today is the last day for early-bird registration...
Dan Bodansky’s new book doesn’t just explain what international environmental law is. It explains why it exists, how it develops, and, very importantly, whether it makes a difference—a difference that you and I can experience in our everyday lives. What I like most about this book is that it gives the reader a feel for the subject (this is why...
For those of us living in the US, it is sometimes difficult to realize that interesting international legal events may also occur elsewhere; for instance, in the UK. Yet, times in the UK are very interesting indeed. This week alone the newspapers were filled with reports on the questioning of senior UK Foreign Office lawyers concerning the legality of the...
One of the most fascinating topics (for positivists like myself anyway) is how customary international law incorporates a consensual element via the idea of persistent objectors. Questions, of course, abound over why persistent objectors get an exemption from a customary rule, when subsequent objectors do not (unless other states acquiesce in the subsequent objector's departure from the rule, or take...
This morning I had the distinct displeasure of being woken up by a phone call coming in on my Finnish cell phone, around 6 a.m. The caller turned out to be a Helsinki-based energy company, which started to promise me all sorts of cheap energy until I pointed out that I was currently residing in New York, that it was...
There are few international lawyers in the world who know more about climate change than Dan Bodansky. More generally, Dan is also an expert on international environmental law (IEL), and in this book he has distilled years of study and observation into a very readable yet sophisticated treatment of the subject. A successful overview and analysis of IEL is very...
