May 2012

You Know International Law Is Getting Some Traction When . . .

. . . your fourth-grader is being taught about the Convention on the Rights of the Child.  Mine had a class last week in which the class was divided into groups, each one given a provision of the treaty, about which they had to develop responses and questions.  His group got article 27, recognizing a child's right to an adequate...

The Trial

Remarkably big news week last week in U.S. law and security matters – alas one that happened to coincide with the final week of our law school semester. So with apologies for belatedness, I wanted to catch up on a few things I missed, starting with the military commission trial of some of the accused conspirators in the attacks of...

Weekday News Wrap: Monday, May 7, 2012

The UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples concluded his report in the United States Friday, warning that historical wrongs-particularly the loss of lands-continue to have an impact on Native American communities and calling on the US to step up efforts to address injustices. Reports have surfaced of child soldiers in rebel ranks in Mali; Human Rights Watch has a report...

Weekend Roundup: April 28 – May 4, 2012

This week on Opinio Juris, Chen Guangcheng’s escape to the US Embassy in Beijing did not go unnoticed. In a first post, Julian Ku discussed how Chen would not get political asylum at the Embassy. Peter Spiro followed up with his thoughts on diplomatic asylum. After Chen’s departure from the US Embassy, Julian asked whether the US or China violated international law. Julian also had a closer look at the content and legal status of the US-Afghanistan Strategic Partnership Agreement that Obama went to sign in Afghanistan. Duncan Hollis posted three first impressions from a recent conference at the US Naval Academy on the Ethics of Military Cyber Operations. Further on novel military operations, Ken Anderson posted a summary of his recent article, co-authored with Matthew Waxman, on the Law and Ethics for Robot Soldiers. Kevin Heller welcomed Communis Hostis Omnium, a blog on maritime piracy, to the blogosphere. He posted on Benjamin Netanyahu’s terrible week and analysed Libya’s challenge of the admissibility of the ICC cases against Gaddafi and Al-Senussi. He then addressed the question, raised in the comments by recent Opinio Juris guest contributor Mark Kersten, whether Libya is “able” to prosecute Gaddafi and Al-Senussi given that neither of them is currently in Libya’s custody. Kevin also discussed how the Nuremberg defense is popping up in the NFL’s bountygate.

Is Missouri v. Holland on a Near-Term Collision Course with the Supreme Court?

Quite possibly.  Here's the Third Circuit's merits opinion in United States v. Bond, involving a conviction under the Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act of 1998.  The court upheld the conviction against a Tenth Amendment attack, this after the Supreme Court last year found Ms. Bond to have standing to press the federalism claim.  After rehearsing the academic debates on Missouri...

Ian Hurd on Law and Diplomacy

Ian Hurd has a very interesting essay on law and international relations, "Law and the Practice of Diplomacy," which I'd strongly recommend to anyone with an IR/IL bent.  It's maybe the only piece of IR theory that I've read that really seems to get the dynamic element of international law.  It also centers international law to what I suspect is...

Weekday News Wrap: Friday, May 4, 2012

Prosecutors are seeking an 80-year sentence for Charles Taylor. The sentencing will take place on May 30th. The US solar industry is pushing the government to bring a WTO complaint against India's local content requirements in the production of solar panels. Despite recent nationalizations in Bolivia and Argentina, the IMF has declined to call it a trend. Speaking in Beijing, American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton...