15 Sep Weekend Roundup: September 8 – 14, 2012
The attacks on US embassies in the Arab world did not escape our bloggers’ attention this week. Duncan Hollis posted about host states’ duties to protect diplomatic and consular premises, and questioned whether Libya and Egypt could be held responsible for the attacks. Julian Ku asked which responses to the death of ambassador Christopher Stevens would be legal under US constitutional and international law. In another post, Julian referred to news reports that the US sent two navy destroyers, marines, investigators and intelligence personnel to Libya to find those responsible for the attack.
The anti-Muslim video that stoked the unrest prompted Peter Spiro to explore the boundaries of free speech. In a post that attracted many comments, he argued that the killing bolsters the case for banning hate speech. He also asked whether those opposed to banning hate speech are equally opposed to Google’s decision to block access to the offensive video in Libya and Egypt.
In other posts, Chris Borgen wrote about the case of Ramil Safarov, described in more detail in this post by his St John’s colleague Mark Movsesian. Chris also posted about the decision of the NYU Journal of International Law and Policy – one of Opinio Juris’ journal symposia partners – to become a peer-reviewed journal, with José E. Alvarez as managing editor.
Kevin Jon Heller referred us to Mark Kersten’s scoop that Libya obtained custody of Al-Senussi by allegedly paying Mauretania $200 million, more than the ICC’s yearly operating budget. Following news that Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, the Guantanamo detainee who was passed away last week, had been cleared for release three years ago, Kevin predicted that “fifty years from now, Gitmo will be a the top of the list of things the Texas Board of Education wants banned from students’ history books”.
Duncan Hollis posted an abstract of the first chapter of his new book The Oxford Guide to Treaties. The entire chapter can now be downloaded from SSRN.
Finally, Mel O’Brien contributed a guest post about trafficking in women and girls discussed during the 52nd session of the Committee on the Elimination of the Discrimination Against Women.
As always, we also provided you with a listing of upcoming events and our daily compilations of international law news.
Have a nice weekend!
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