A recent post at Mother Jones mentions my view of UBL's killing and provides Ken's brief thoughts on his death: Kenneth Anderson, a law professor at American University Washington School of Law, disagrees. "Being wounded does not necessarily render one hors de combat; hors de combat means they’re not actually posing a threat to you," Anderson says, citing moments where wounded...
France and the United Kingdom reported at the Security Council that all options are on the table regarding Syria. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced yesterday that he will speak on Iran at the UN General Assembly in a speech next month. An IAEA report has indicated that Iran has increased its stockpiles of enriched uranium and has doubled its centrifuges. Approximately 80%...
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameni has said that Iran will never pursue a nuclear weapon, but will not give up its right to peaceful energy at the summit for the Non-Aligned Movement in Tehran. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has asked the leaders of Iran at the summit to prove that the nuclear development in their country is for peaceful...
Of the 1500+ posts I've written for Opinio Juris over the past seven years, none angered my fellow progressives more than the post in which I claimed that the killing of Usama bin Laden was perfectly legal under international law. Here is what I wrote: To begin with, I think the applicable legal regime is international humanitarian law (IHL), not international...
French authorities have opened up a murder inquiry into the death of Yasser Arafat in 2004 at a Paris hospital, following allegations earlier this year that he may have died of polonium poisoning. India's Supreme Court has upheld the death penalty for Ajmal Kasab, the Pakistani national convicted for the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks. A Pakistani newspaper has reported that Al Qaeda recruited two Somali...
It is a draft platform, but these parts of the 2012 GOP Platform are certainly interesting. It appears to have strong language in favor of "American Exceptionalism" and American sovereignty. Under our Constitution, treaties become the law of the land. So it is all the more important that the Congress -- the senate through its ratifying power and the House through...
Basil Katz at Reuters has an article about Section 502 of the Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act of 2012. This section lifts the Central Bank of Iran's immunity under the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act of 1976 and effectively neuters the Bank's defences in a case pending before the US District Court for the Southern District of New York in...
In an effort not to stoke tensions any further, Japan's central government has declined authorization to the Tokyo Metropolitan Authorities to survey the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. Japan's territorial tensions with South Korea hinder their bilateral free trade negotiations. The EU has called on Gambia to halt executions of death row inmates after Amnesty International reported that 9 were executed last Thursday, and all remaining inmates are scheduled...
Calls for Papers The Irish Yearbook of International Law has a call for papers for a special symposium issue regarding Climate Justice in International Law (Word document). Submission deadline is August 31, 2012. The University of Sydney is hosting a post-graduate conference on November 1-2, 2012 entitled Crossing Boundaries (Word document), open to post-grads in the Asia-Pacific region. Deadlines of abstract submission (no more...
With the start of the US academic year just around the corner, activity picked up here at Opinio Juris this week. There certainly wasn't a shortage of international law items to discuss...
I hope this statement by Assange's legal team is just seeking leverage for negotiations, because I think their claim would be blown out of the water by the ICJ. It would be an international embarrassment for Ecuador. Actually, it would be a further international embarrassment for Ecuador, which is already beginning to seem a little ridiculous in its involvement in this...
Libya has set a date for the trial of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, despite the calls for him to be tried at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. More from Jurist can be found here. Israel claimed that South Africa is acting like an "apartheid state" with its new move to mark goods coming from the West Bank with made in...
