Weekend Roundup: January 12-18, 2013

The week on Opinio Juris started off on a lighter note with Ken’s post on the Obama Administration’s response to a petition to build the Death Star. And although the administration’s answer encourages readers to  “pursue a career in a science, technology, engineering or math-related field”, our comments raised the question of customary inter-stellar law. The pop cultural fun continued later with a video linking Ken to the Terminator…

The call for referral of the Syria situation to the ICC was the topic of two posts. In a guest post, Jennifer Trahan analysed the merits of a referral and expressed some concerns about its implementation. Kevin also weighed in with a few thoughts. Jennifer’s comment then led Kevin to develop his argument that the Security Council cannot implicitly amend the ICC Statute, which triggered further discussion in the comments.

Continuing on the ICC, Kevin posted why Saif Gadhafi’s first court appearance in Libya undermines the state’s arguments in its complementarity challenge at the ICC. In another post, Kevin was very critical about the decision by Judge Pohl rejecting the argument that the US and Al-Qaeda were at war at the time of the attack on the USS Cole.

Kristen Boon compared sanctions by the UN Security Council with those imposed by regional organizations, particularly the African Union and ECOWAS, who are becoming increasingly active. Further on Africa, Deborah asked whether, under international and domestic law, the US could engage in armed drone strikes to assist the French intervention in Mali.

We also had two guest posts this week. Peter Margulies provided a guest post summarizing the debate on targeted killing at a recent symposium on the Boundaries of the Battlefield, co-ordinated by my fellow Assistant Editor, Jessica Dorsey, and Başak Çalı posted the second part of her series on international judicial review, comparing two cases of the European Court of Human Rights.

In addition to our regular Events and announcements post, Julian announced that Tom Graham, member of the WTO’s Appellate Body, will give the Shapiro lecture at Hofstra on February 6. Roger congratulated David Caron on his appointment as the new dean at the Dickson Poon School of Law at King’s College London, and Kevin welcomed Diane Marie Amann back to the blogosphere. As always, we also provided you with daily news wraps.

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