Weekend Roundup: January 19-25, 2013

This week on Opinio Juris, Duncan was thrilled that the Supreme Court had finally reached a decision on whether to grant certiorari in Bond v United States, a case that requires revisiting Missouri v Holland. Julian though questioned whether Bond v United States will matter, although he gave his own two cents on the treaty power and federalism later.

Julian clearly got more excited about the Philippines’ move towards UNCLOS arbitration in the South China Sea dispute with China, which he labelled a game-changer. In further posts on this arbitration, he reflected on China’s options, disagreed with the Chinese argument that it could still withhold agreement to set up a tribunal and reflected on the irony that the Japanese ITLOS President gets to appoint an arbitrator on China’s behalf if China fails to do so.

Julian was surprised by John Bellinger’s op-ed on intervention in Syria, which John Bellinger then clarified in a guest post. Julian also noted a slight shift in the US foreign policy establishment against drone strikes with a recent critique on current policy by the Council of Foreign Relations

Kevin meanwhile was (nearly) rendered speechless, not once but twice, first by the US Air Force’s claim that US militarism is a fitting tribute to Martin Luther King and then by an article quoting Jeh Johnson as stating that MLK would approve the US’ current wars. He also thought that it was pathetic for Susan Rice to object to a “State of Palestine” nameplate in the UN Security Council. And this brings me to his next post on Palestine, summarizing why it matters formally that Palestine ratifies the Rome Statute on top of its ad hoc declaration under article 12(3).

In other posts, Kevin found a further reason to disagree with Judge Pohl’s decision in al-Nashiri, this time because of Hamdan II. Peter Spiro looked at President Obama’s second inaugural speech from the perspective of citizenship and concluded that the speech was mainly intended for domestic consumption. Julian had not noticed last weekend’s conclusion of the negotiations on an international agreement on the control of mercury and wondered about the negotiation dynamics. Finally, Kristen provided a list of International Law Apps and wondered whether we’ll see more of them in the future.

As always, we also provided a list of events and Announcements and our weekday news wraps.

Have a nice weekend!