Weekend Roundup: March 2-8, 2013

This week on Opinio Juris, Kevin argued why the OPCD’s small victory over the return of documents seized by Libya may be important in the longer run because of its consequences for Libya’s admissibility challenge. He also quoted from Libya’s latest submission on the admissibility challenge to argue why it should lose the challenge. Shifting his focus to the US, Kevin asked three questions about AG Holder’s response to Rand Paul.

Tactics were the key word for Julian this week. He assessed two proposals for legal tactics that the US could use to win the cyberwar with other countries, and discussed Argentina’s tactics in the NML v. Argentina sovereign bond litigation.

Kristen Boon pointed out topics of interest at the Human Rights Council’s 22nd session, while Ken Anderson flagged the ongoing debate over at Lawfare and at Jens Ohlin’s Lieber Code about Ryan Goodman’s EJIL article on the power to kill or capture enemy combatants, as well as Jens’ response essay on SSRN.

We also had a wide range of guest posts this week. In a post that unsurprisingly attracted a lot of comments, Sigall Horovitz described how Israel can legally avoid, at least for seven years, an ICC investigation into the West Bank Settlements.

William Dodge updated us on Samatar’s certiorari petition to the US Supreme Court with a post summarizing the who, what and exceptions to state, status-based and conduct-based immunity.

We hosted a symposium on the latest issue of the Harvard International Law Journal. The first article, by Ginsburg, Elkins and Simmons, dealt with an issue that also got some attention on the blog last week: the impact of international human rights treaties on domestic constitutions. Christopher N.J. Roberts’ comments wondered whether the UDHR can be considered a template for domestic changes and what the impact of domestic legal culture is on the understanding of similar rights. Tom Ginsburg responded here.

The second article of the symposium was Natalie Lockwood’s article on International Vote Buying, for which William Burke-White provided the response. He questioned whether a legal prohibition on vote buying would be effective, but applauded the article for its re-examination of the role of economic power in the international community. Natalie’s response addressed whether vote buying and diplomacy can be separated as well as the difference between economic coercion and vote buying.

The third article discussed was Ashley Deeks’ one on Consent to the Use of Force and International Law Supremacy. Comments were provided by Opinio Juris’ own Duncan Hollis. He responded in two posts: one on issues of international law supremacy and another on whether international law should be able to invalidate consent if it manifestly violates the domestic law of the consenting state.

The final article was Moira Paz’ The Failed Promise of Language Rights: A Critique of the International Language Rights Regime, with Efrat Arbel as commentator. Moira’s response is here.

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

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