May 2011

So, you're a climate scientist. You're tired of the lies and misinformation about climate change peddled by know-nothing pundits on the radical right. (We're looking at you, George Will.) What do you do? You rap about it, of course. Well done, Aussies. More info at The Guardian here....

Please don't make any important international news or events with any international law implications, because we're exhausted from the last week or two, and also we have a lot of papers and exams to grade.  Memo to World:  Don't do anything rash for awhile, while we catch up.  (I'm just back from a week guest-posting at Instapundit, and talk about...

Because the "Untold Stories" symposium that Gerry Simpson and I organized was such a success, we are organizing another one.  Here is the call for papers: THE EICHMANN TRIAL AT 50 A two-day international symposium to discuss one of the most important trials of the 20th Century Melbourne Law School 14-15 October 2011 Presented by The Asia Pacific Centre for Military Law, Melbourne Law School,...

The Gottingen Journal of International Law has just made available online its new special issue that focuses on the relationship between resources and conflicts. This issuse is the result of a symposium which was held this past October. The sixteen papers are organized around the four panel themes: (a) resources before, during, and after conflicts; (b) actors of armed conflicts and international...

I am proud and delighted to report that my former student and current friend, Golriz Ghahraman, has accepted a position as a prosecutor at the ECCC.  I don't think I'm old enough or distinguished enough to have a protege -- but if I am, she's it.  Golriz, who is Iranian-Kiwi, is by far the most gifted student I've ever had,...

At The New Yorker blog, a useful discussion of the legal issues in the OBL attack. As Raffi Khatchadourian writes: What was true in Iraq and in the Second World War also applies in the ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Targeted air strikes are status-based operations. The drone strikes are status-based operations. Raids conducted by Special Forces to kill key...

At the end of my last post I alluded to preemption as an obstacle to receiving an offer. Many times authors will be able to determine for themselves whether their article is novel or whether someone else had the same idea in 1986. Other times information about possibly preempting articles is more asymmetrical. My impression is that there are a...

[caption id="attachment_15758" align="alignleft" width="276" caption=" "][/caption]So where are the happiest mothers in the world? According to Save the Children, it's Norway. Norway has the highest ratio of female-to-male earned income, the highest contraceptive prevalence rate, one of the lowest under-5 mortality rate and one of the most generous maternity leave policies in the developed world. The other countries in...

I hope readers have been following the backlash against CUNY's Board of Trustees for its cowardly decision not to award Tony Kushner an honorary degree from John Jay college because one trustee -- with no notice, and giving Kushner no opportunity to respond -- lied about his political beliefs and accused him of being "anti-Israel."  Here is a bit of...

If I were the Obama administration, I would be looking to put together an ad hoc task force of senior administration lawyers, led by Harold Koh, to defend the following propositions as matters of law. It is: okay to enter a country that is “unable or unwilling,” [temporarily recall Deeks to DOS] okay to treat it as armed conflict under jus ad...