Weekend Roundup: December 15-21. 2012

This week on Opinio Juris, Kristen Boon followed up on her discussion last week about changes towards more transparency and fairness in the UN’s Al Qaida sanctions regime.

Craig Allen contributed a guest post on the ITLOS’ interim order for the release by Ghana of Argentina’s ARA Libertad. UNCLOS was also central to Duncan Hollis’ post on China’s submission to the Continental Shelf Commission in relation to the dispute regarding the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands.

Peggy McGuinness congratulated Diane Amann, Leila Sadat and Patricia Sellers on their appointments as special advisor to the ICC’s OTP, but was saddened that Diane’s appointment meant a goodbye from IntLawGrrls.

In response to John Bellinger’s NYTimes op-ed, Chris Borgen argued that it is up to Republican leadership to address their base’s aversion towards international treaties. Further on news from the US Senate, Deborah Pearlstein posted the open letter by Senators Feinstein, Levin and McCain to Sony Pictures, protesting against the depiction of torture as an effective means of intelligence gathering in the new movie Zero Dark Thirty. She followed up with a post on the CIA’s press release about the movie.

We concluded the week with our final journal symposium of the year, on the latest issue of the Leiden Journal of International Law. Dov Jacobs introduced the two articles to be discussed, and the comments, here. The first article, by Monika Ambrus, looked through the lens of discrimination law at the question of defining a group for the purpose of the definition of genocide. William Schabas questioned why the definition of genocide needs to be broadened given that the definition of a crime against humanity has already been expanded to include peacetime atrocities. Frederic Mégret’s comment focused on the 19th century understanding of race and ethnicity that permeates the genocide definition. Monika Ambrus’ response is here. Samantha Besson’s article on extra-territoriality of the European Convention of Human Rights was the second article in the symposium. Comments were provided by Cedric Ryngaert and Marko Milanovic, to which Samantha Besson responded here.

Our weekly events and announcements and weekday news wraps completed the week.

Have a nice weekend!