Weekend Roundup: December 1-7, 2012

This week on Opinio Juris, we continued a few conversations from last week. Kevin Jon Heller clarified his argument about the retroactive acceptance of the ICC’s jurisdiction, and challenged the assumption that Palestine was not a state before last week’s UNGA vote. Deborah Pearlstein advanced three reasons for the importance of Jeh Johnson’s recent speech on the conditions for calling an end to the war on terror.

Continuing on the war on terror, Kevin expressed concern over the extension of US targeting policy in Afghanistan to “children with potential hostile intent“.

A few posts dealt with the growing divide between US law and international law. In a guest post on the Feinstein amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, Jonathan Hafetz argued that the amendment widens the rift between US constitutional law and international law by deepening discrimination against non-citizens.  Peter Spiro and Julian Ku both wrote about the Senate’s rejection of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Peter argued that the rejection does not prove that sovereigntism lives, but rather that the supermajority required by the US constitution’s Treaty clause is outdated. He also posted a link to a Daily Show segment on the vote. Julian argued that sovereigntists should have held their fire for other treaties that, contrary to the CRPD, may actually have an impact on US law. In another post, Julian argued that a unilateral US intervention in Syria if the Assad regime deploys chemical weapons would be illegal under international law.

Following a recent meeting of the International Commission on the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna, Kristen Boon discussed possible incentives to avoid overfishing. Kristen also discussed whether the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States (CERDS) could fill the legal void surrounding land grabbing.

As always, we also provided a list of upcoming events and weekday news wraps.

Have a nice weekend!