Weekend Roundup: October 27 – November 2, 2012

This week on Opinio Juris, our thoughts are with our US East Coast readers affected by Superstorm Sandy. We hope you and your loved ones are safe and sound.

Posting was light this week because of the storm, which forced us to postpone a symposium on Duncan Hollis’ edited volume, The Oxford Guide to Treaties, to next week. But Sandy also provided inspiration for a few substantive posts. Kristen Boon highlighted recent developments in international disaster law and Peter Spiro built on this asking whether in the long term there should be a global FEMA.

The Washington Post’s series of articles on “The Permanent War” prompted Ken Anderson to compare the different attitudes of the US political community and the international legal community towards accepting US “counter-terrorism on offense” policies from a legal and policy perspective, and discuss strategic considerations for advocacy groups to challenge the convergence towards acceptance of these policies within the US political community. In another post, Ken mentioned the little-known law of edged weapons.

Kevin Jon Heller posted an abstract of his draft article on the legality of signature strikes. He also wrote about the UK’s Supreme Court rejection of the argument that al-Qaeda operatives are not protected persons under article 49 of the fourth Geneva Convention, as argued in an OLC memo authored by Jack Goldsmith.

Looking forward to next week, Peter Spiro asked whether Americans abroad could determine the US presidential election.

As each week, we brought you daily news updates and a list of upcoming events. Kristen Boon also drew your attention to the upcoming annual conference of the Canadian Council of International Law.

Have a nice weekend!