Weekend Roundup: July 14-20, 2012

This week on Opinio Juris, Julian Ku discussed how the announcement by two US Senators of their position against ratification of the UNCLOS, has effectively sunk ratification for this year, and argued that the next administration should seek out bilateral agreements to protect commercial exploitation of the seabed on the high seas.

Deborah Pearlstein argued why the US, even if it is not at war with Yemen, is at war in Yemen, and discussed the legal consequences thereof.

Kevin Jon Heller gave four reasons why the ICC should not get involved in Mali and discussed the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber’s rejection of the Office of the Public Counsel for the Defence’s request that certain information in its response to Libya’s admissibility challenge be kept confidential to all other parties involved.

Roger Alford summarized empirical evidence on the question whether democracies are less corrupt than autocratic regimes.

We also had a guest post by Sari Bashi who welcomed the candor, although not the conclusions, of a recent Israeli committee report renouncing the existence of a state of occupation in the West Bank.

Our bloggers also wrote about interesting new material that has recently become available. Duncan Hollis, our resident connoisseur of databases and digests, posted about the release of the 2011 Digest of United States Practice and the wider availability of a database on bilateral civilian nuclear co-operation agreements. Duncan also welcomed Arms Control Law to the blogosphere.

Kevin Jon Heller drew your attention to a recent essay by David Frakt on direct participation by civilians in hostilities as a war crime, which led to further discussion between John C. Dehn and David Frakt in our comments.

Jessica Dorsey posted about the digital release of volume 88 of the US Naval War College’s International Law Studies’ Blue Book series.

Finally, we published a list of upcoming events and our daily news wraps.

Have a great weekend!