In association with the International Commission of Jurists

October 2012

18 Oct

[Chris Brummer is Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center] Joost Pauwelyn, Ramses Wessel and Jan Wouters have assembled a remarkable cadre of leading intellectuals to tackle some of the toughest issues of international law—what explains informal international lawmaking, what are the legal questions flowing from it, and, as my comments will discuss, examining the key concept of accountability. With...

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18 Oct

[Jan Wouters is Professor of International Law and International Organizations, Jean Monnet Chair Ad Personam EU and Global Governance, and Director of the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies and Institute for International Law at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven).] Once we conclude that IN-LAW is not devoid of impact and cannot be ignored as a normative process, the question...

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18 Oct

The US and Israel are set to hold a joint missile exercise later this month, displaying their close cooperation in the face of Iran’s nuclear program development. Both Uganda and Rwanda have denied involvement with rebels in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and call recent allegations by the UN “rubbish.” Russia has criticized the European Union for the recent sanctions it...

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17 Oct

Jack Goldsmith offers five thoughts today at Lawfare about the D.C. Circuit's Hamdan II decision.  I agree with two of his thoughts -- that the government is free to rely in future prosecutions on alternatives to material support (MST) such as aiding and abetting terrorism, and that (sadly)  al-Bahlul could be detained indefinitely if he is ultimately acquitted by his...

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17 Oct

The leader in question, not surprisingly, is Bryan Fischer, the head of the extremely powerful American Family Association.  Here is what he said in an interview: Hitler recruited around him homosexuals to make up his Stormtroopers, they were his enforcers, they were his thugs. And Hitler discovered that he could not get straight soldiers to be savage and brutal and vicious...

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17 Oct

[Ramses Wessel is Professor of the Law of the European Union and other International Organizations at the University of Twente] First of all many thanks to Prof. Tai-Heng Cheng for taking the time to respond so eloquently to the parts on legality and normativity in our book on Informal International Lawmaking. Because of his knowledge of the area (as for instance reflected in...

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17 Oct

A quick reminder from FOB ("Friend of Blog") Professor Ruth Wedgwood that the American Branch of the International Law Association's International Law Weekend 2012 will be held next week in New York City. The full program is here, and includes several other FOBs as well as several of our permanent contributors.  And here is a message  from Professor Wedgwood herself:: The...

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17 Oct

[Tai-Heng Cheng is the international disputes partner of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP in New York.  Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of his firm or its clients.] Congratulations are due to the authors of Informal International Lawmaking, and especially to the editors, Professors Pauwelyn, Wesssel and Wouters, for their keen observations and appraisals of the global decisionmaking...

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17 Oct

[Ramses Wessel is Professor of the Law of the European Union and other International Organizations at the University of Twente] In Part II we focus on the legal nature of informal international lawmaking. Perhaps ironically the question of whether IN-LAW should be perceived as forming part of the ‘legal universe’ is one of the most prominent ones addressed in this book. The...

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17 Oct

The D.C. Circuit’s decision overturning Salim Hamdan’s military commission conviction on the grounds that “material support for terrorism” is not a war crime under international law is significant in a host of ways. Steve Vladeck lists a few over at Lawfare. Beyond that, it strikes me that the decision offers a handful of indicators Congress might especially note....

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17 Oct

The media and blogosphere are predictably -- and justifiably -- abuzz about Candy Crowley pointing out that Romney was wrong when he claimed it took Obama two weeks to label the Benghazi attack an "act of terror."  More interesting, though, is the push-back from Romney surrogates like Ed Gillespie, who said afterward that "[s]he was wrong about it, no doubt...

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17 Oct

South Sudan's Parliament has ratified a border and oil deal with Sudan, which includes a demilitarized zone between the two states. The EU has placed new sanctions on Iranian oil, gas and tanker companies, the effects of which Iran calls futile. In related news, A NYTimes article describes the impact of European sanctions on Iran's ability to keep the money printing presses going. Invoking humanitarian reasons, the UK...

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