Weekend Roundup: January 5-11, 2013

This week on Opinio Juris, Kevin responded to Eugene Kontorovitch’s post over at The Volokh Conspiracy on the comparability of Israel’s settlement of the West Bank to Turkey’s settlement of Northern Cyprus, by arguing that both settlements are not comparable. Eugene rebutted by advancing five reasons why Turkey’s settlement is the graver violation of international law.

Reflecting on Zero Dark Thirty, Deborah wrote about the responsibility of film makers for the story they decide to tell, and deplored that Bigelow and Boal were not willing to engage more deeply in the public conversation on the use of torture in the war on terror. Further on the War on Terror, Ken argued that Jen Daskal’s NYTimes op-ed on keeping Guantanamo open for now is less heretic for a human rights lawyers than its title suggests.

Meanwhile, Duncan is still waiting for the US Supreme Court to decide on whether to grant certiorari, and in the process revisit Missouri v Holland, in the case of Carol Ann Bond.

Roger Alford posted a graph showing the growth of international law scholarship on Westlaw since 1987. Kevin brought two pieces of new scholarship to your attention by posting links to his essay on the role of the international prosecutor, forthcoming in the Oxford Handbook of International Adjudication, and to a very timely essay by Luc Reydams on the US-Rwanda relationship.

In addition to posts by our regular contributors, we welcomed three guests on the blog this week. First, William Dodge contributed a guest post updating us on recent developments in official acts immunity. In her post, Jennifer Trahan hailed the extension of the US Rewards for Justice program to include the arrests of those wanted by international criminal tribunals, and suggested other ways to strengthen the US-ICC relationship. Finally, Başak Çalı offered a different framework to look at the often difficult relationship between domestic courts and the European Court of Human Rights, arguing that the latter is only engaged in weak international judicial review.

As always, we also provided you with our weekday news wraps and a listing of events and announcements.

Many thanks to our guest contributors and have a nice weekend!