Weekend Roundup: August 25 – September 7, 2012

At the start of the US academic year, Peggy welcomed Stephen Walt’s recommendation, though not his reasons, that wannabe foreign policy wonks study international law, and Roger Alford posted about James Phillips and John Yoo’s analysis of international and comparative law all-stars at the top 16 US law schools.

The Republican and Democratic conventions also caught our bloggers’ attention. Julian Ku posted about the strong language in the draft republican platform on protecting American sovereignty and opposing agreements such as UNCLOS, and Peter Spiro doubted whether the idea of citizenship, pressed in Obama’s speech, would stick given the hollow meaning of the rights and responsibilities of citizenship nowadays.

Congratulations are in order for Duncan Hollis, whose edited volume The Oxford Guide to Treaties is now available in Europe and can be ordered in the US.

Roger Alford posted on the legislative fixes to the problem of executing damages claims against Iran, and provided background to the case that prompted the fix.

Following the revelations in “No Easy Day“, Kevin Jon Heller felt compelled to revise his earlier position that Osama Bin Laden’s killing was legal, and, in a follow-up post, discussed what it means for a combatant to be hors de combat.

In ICL news, Kevin posted about Mauritania’s surprise decision to extradite al-Senussi to Libya, increasing the chances of Libya’s admissibility challenge at the ICC succeeding. Kevin was also baffled by Justice Sow’s agreement to testify in the appeal brought by Charles Taylor’s defense team against his conviction by the Special Court for Sierra Leone, in support of his allegations when the original judgment was read that there had been no deliberations.

If you want to follow Kevin more, he is now on Twitter, as are a few of his co-bloggers, and Opinio Juris itself.

Finally, we also posted some upcoming events and provided you with our weekday compilations of international news.

Have a nice weekend!