Holiday Roundup: December 22, 2012 – January 4, 2013

Over the holidays here at Opinio Juris, the comments section of Kevin’s post on the distinction between the legality and the morality of drone strikes was a hive of activity. The post itself was a follow-up to a first post in which Kevin applied a comparative criminal law lens to argue that under the broader understanding of intent prevailing outside the United States, the moral distinction between the intentional killing of children in Newtown and the unintentional killing of children during drone strikes isn’t all that clear.

Inspired by the suggestion that Palestine could limit an ICC referral to the situation in the West Bank, Kevin advanced legal and political arguments against the notion that a self-referral could be geographically limited. Further on the ICC, Jelia Sane contributed a guest post reflecting on the Court’s first acquittal.

The end of 2012 inspired Chris to look towards future areas of (international) law in 2013 and beyond, focusing in particular on the need for regulation to deal with the impact of technological change, such as flying cars and 3D printing. Ken has already made a new year’s resolution to post more about robots, but promised to cover other areas as well. His first post of the year covered adulteration of extra virgin olive oil, showing that there is no limit to potential international law questions. Kristen Boon also reflected on the role of international law in settling the East China Sea dispute.

If you need to catch up with the news of the past fortnight, our weekday news wraps may be helpful. As always, we also provided our weekly events and announcements posts (1, 2).

Best wishes for 2013 to all our readers!