Today at noon, the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute at Washington University Law School is holding a debate on targeted killing using drone aircraft. It features Notre Dame's Mary Ellen O'Connell and yours truly, and moderated by Minnesota Public Radio's Matt Sepic. Mary Ellen and I each hold strong views on this topic, of course, and I am greatly...
At Foreign Policy, Bill Egginton, the chair of German and Romance Languages and Literatures at Johns Hopkins -- and more importantly, my best friend -- has a fascinating article on Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian novelist who just won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Here is a snippet: [H]is latest book, El sueño del celta, which will be released on Nov....
The American Branch of the International Law Association will be hosting its annual International Law Weekend in New York City, October 21-23. The full program can be found here, and includes some great panels on a range of topics under the theme “International Law and Institutions: Advancing Justice, Security and Prosperity.” (You might even see an OJ blogger or two!) ...
That appears to be the upshot of section 704 of Public Law 111-117, a doorstop appropriations measure enacted last December: SEC. 704. Unless otherwise specified during the current fiscal year, no part of any appropriation contained in this or any other Act shall be used to pay the compensation of any officer or employee of the Government of...
A while back I wrote a sort post on the violent political economy of rare earth elements, also known as REE's. A recent Congressional Research Service report (.pdf is here) describes the central (and until recently under-reported) role of REE's in the modern economy and national security infrastructure: Some of the major end uses for rare earth elements include use in automotive...
Congratulations to my old friend (and currently WCL colleague) Juan Mendez on his appointment as UN special rapporteur on torture. Professor Mendez has a long and distinguished record of service and achievement in the human rights field, including heading Americas Watch at Human Rights Watch for many years, a term as president of the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights, a...
The Summer 2010 issue of Cabinet has an interview with Professor Christina Duffy Burnett of Columbia about the legal status of islands. When we've written about this issue here on Opinio Juris, we thought of issues relating to how islands can affect claims to underwater resources, or the question of Guantanamo as a legal black hole, or the issue of climate change and sinking islands....
On behalf of all of us at Opinio Juris, I want to thank Amos Guiora for taking time to blog with us this past week about his new book, Freedom from Religion. We would also like to thank Paul Cliteur, John Lentz, and Mark Movsesian for guest blogging with us as well and providing such an interesting and informative discussion...
Obama apologized on Friday for experiments conducted in Guatemala between 1946 and 1948 in which American scientists deliberately infected prison inmates, prostitutes, and mental patients with syphilis without their consent. The apology is a striking reminder that the Nazis were not the only ones that conducted horrific, non-consensual medical experiments on human subjects in the first half of the 20th...
I am interested in the issue of "coded language." As a protestant minister who preaches from sacred texts often using theological language concerning, for example, "sin" "redemption" "judgement," etc., am I to interpret that this theological language is "coded?" It is, of course, in a way - for it is language that is full of meaning(s) - hence, meaningful. Professor Marcus...
Thanks to Professors Guiora and Cliteur, and my colleague and friend Chris Borgen, for their helpful responses to my posts. I find that I can agree with some important aspects of Prof. Cliteur’s most recent response. For example, he advocates a theoretical approach to the problem of religious terrorism – “a scholarly understanding of its nature” rather than the “judicial reactions”...
