Weekend Roundup: December 8-14, 2012

This week on Opinio Juris, a guest post by Daniel Bethlehem, following up on a post by Julian Ku last week, offered three more legal bases for the legality of an intervention in Syria. Also continuing on some of last week’s themes, Kevin Jon Heller wrote how a recent decision by the ICC’s Appeals Chamber confirms his argument on retroactive ad hoc jurisdiction, and Deborah Pearlstein couldn’t resist taking apart Eric Posner’s Slate article on Jeh Johnson’s recent speech in Oxford. In another post, Deborah refused to read too much into the decisions by Harold Koh and Jeh Johnson to step down from their respective roles at the State Department and the Pentagon.

Ken Anderson recapped the recent debate on autonomous weapon systems and regulation, about which he has created a brief bibliography over at Lawfare. He also extended his congratulations to various members of the OJ community, including Kevin who was recently promoted to Associate Professor & Reader.

Kevin discussed rumours that the OTP is investigating the actions of the M23 movement and others in eastern Congo, and Kirsten Boon discussed the UN Security Council’s upcoming review of the mandate of the Ombudsperson and monitoring regime for al-Qaida sanctions.

On a lighter note, Duncan Hollis provided a link to Jimmy Fallon’s routine on the best treaty in the world and Kevin posted about international relations as depicted by cats.

As always, we provided a listing of upcoming events and daily news wraps.

Have a nice weekend!