I want to thank Dan for writing such a comprehensive book about the conceptual and applied elements in international environmental law (IEL). To a non-lawyer, it reads like a state of the art report on IEL. International environmental law is particularly striking to me, especially when compared to other substantive areas of international law, in the number of actual texts...
How and why do international environmental norms arise? In what ways do they affect behavior? Do they change what states and individuals actually do, and, if so, why? How effective are they in solving international environmental problems? These are some of the questions I examine in my new book, The Art and Craft of International Environmental Law. My decision to write the book...
Opinio Juris is pleased to be hosting this week a discussion of Professor Dan Bodansky's new book, "The Art and Craft of International Environmental Law" (Harvard Univ. Press, 2010). Dan is well known to our readers as a frequent guest blogger and commentator on international environmental law, a field in which he is one of the world's leading scholars. The...
If you haven't seen this already, you should. The eight-minute video shows the winner of Ukraine's Got Talent, 24-year-old Kseniya Simonova, dramatizing the effect of Operation Barbarossa on the Ukraine through a series of drawings on an illuminated sand table. It is absolutely mesmerizing -- beautiful, disturbing, moving. As you will see, many members of the audience...
President Obama’s decision not to seek additional legislative authority for detentions at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba—combined with Congress’s lack of interest in the task—means that, for good or for ill, judges through their exercise of habeas jurisdiction are writing the substantive and procedural rules governing military detention of terrorist suspects. Our purpose in this report is to describe in detail and analyze the courts’ work to date—and thus map the contours of the nascent law of military detention that is emerging from it.
Over the last few days I learned a valuable lesson: irony and satire do not work. I thought my contribution on soft statehood was written with my tongue so far in my cheek that it risked coming out of my ear; I thought I had piled on the layers of irony so richly that had my contribution been a pastry,...
The proposed anti-homosexuality legislation introduced by Ugandan parliament back-bencher David Bahati is creating an international outcry. The bill--introduced as a private member's bill without government support--would impose the death penalty for "aggravated homosexuality," defined as "sex with a minor or a disabled person, where the offender is HIV-positive, a parent or a person in authority over the victim, or...
The American Branch of the International Law Association has posted a call for panels for the 2010 International Law Weekend, which will take place in New York October 21-23. This year's theme is "International Law and Institutions: Advancing Justice, Security and Prosperity." ILW is always a fun event -- with lots of student, NGO, IO and private...
If you are in the DC area on Monday, January 25, you might want to check out this event at ASIL Tillar House, 2:30-5:00 pm. This looks to be a terrific discussion with great people on the program. "Mind the Gap: International Human Rights Law and the Law of Armed Conflict," with Gabriella Blum and Geoffrey Corn as discussants, and...
(I put this as a comment below, but have decided to move it up as a post, with a question for Professor Klabbers.) What a fascinating post - thanks for being with us on OJ! I have two reactions that seem, on the surface, perhaps contradictory - but perhaps they are not. On the one hand, the idea of gradations of sovereignty...
It would be tempting to join Opinio Juris' discussion on soft law of a few weeks ago, but having written quite a bit on the topic going back to the mid-1990s, I thought I'd pay some attention to a lovely little story that ran in the New York Times about a month or two ago (I forgot to date my clipping...
Paul Caron at Tax Prof Blog has just published the annual rankings for law professor blogs. There is some very useful information, including overall traffic numbers and details on which blogs are growing and declining in numbers. (Opinio Juris is now ranked 16th overall and is among the top ten in percentage annual increases). As I have reported before,...
