(UPDATE: Whoops, Ken beat me to the punch. Still, look here for more comments soon.) Here is the opinion. I am just going through it now, but it looks like the ATS is going to be severely restricted on territoriality grounds for the near future. More from all of us later on today....
The US Supreme Court released its long-awaited Kiobel decision this morning, affirming the Second Circuit's dismissal of the plaintiffs Alien Tort Statute claims. Chief Justice Roberts wrote the opinion, joined by Justices Scalia, Alito, Thomas, and Kennedy. Justice Kennedy wrote a separate concurrence; Justice Alito did likewise, joined by Justice Thomas. Justice Breyer concurred in the judgment, joined by Justices...
Yesterday, the ICJ reached its judgment in the frontier dispute between Burkina Faso and Niger. The BBC has more here. According to a bipartisan report by the Constitution Project (.pdf), the US has engaged in torture at the highest levels. Human Rights Watch also offers a statement here. The New Zealand parliament has passed a bill legalizing same-sex marriage. Privacy International has sued the United...
So reports the Kuwait News Agency. The building is expected to be completed in late 2015. Here is the winning design: You can read more about the design, and see more artists renderings, here. It's not a bad design, but it's a bit too high-modernist for my taste. I preferred the one by Wiel Arets Architects & Associates that won third prize...
An opinion piece in Al-Jazeera by an international lawyer who works with the Palestinians, John Whitbeck, reports some interesting comments by Fatou Bensouda about Palestinian ratification: During a public discussion held at the Academie Diplomatique Internationale in Paris on March 20, Fatou Bensouda, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, addressed the potential membership of Palestine in the ICC. During the...
The Asahi Shimbun is running a couple of interesting features on the International Court of Justice and Japan's relationship with it. One essay features interviews with Japan's current and former members of the ICJ: President Owada and former vice-president Oda. The other explores what might happen if Japan were to somehow send its disputes with China and Korea to the...
Oral arguments began yesterday at the ICJ in the Thailand-Cambodia border dispute about land surrounding the Temple Vihear, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Syrian warplanes have launched further attacks in Damascus in addition to a handful of other rebel-held Syrian cities. Heads of the World Health Organization and UNICEF made a rare political plea to the international community yesterday stating that intervention...
Apparently, the answer is yes, according to Professor Jeremi Suri of the University of Texas writing in the New York Times: The Korean crisis has now become a strategic threat to America’s core national interests. The best option is to destroy the North Korean missile on the ground before it is launched. The United States should use a precise airstrike to...
As North Korea celebrated the 101st birthday of the country's founder, the US has said it is ready to "reach out" if Pyongyang gives up its nuclear aspirations after warning North Korea that a nuclear missile launch would be a "huge mistake." Foreign Policy offers a way to solve the North Korea nuke problem, opining that the road to Pyongyang goes...
Calls for papers In case you haven't seen it yet, we have launched our own call for papers aimed at LL.M, Ph.D and S.J.D. students as well as those practitioners/academics within the first five years post-degree to participate in our New Voices symposium starting in July. The deadline for 200-word abstract submissions is May 1, 2013. Vermont Law School will host the fourth-annual Colloquium on...
Last November, two documents appeared within a few days of each other, each addressing the emerging legal and policy issues of autonomous weapon systems - and taking strongly incompatible approaches. One was from Human Rights Watch, whose report, Losing Our Humanity: The Case Against Killer Robots, made a sweeping, provocative call for an international treaty ban on the use, production,...
This week on Opinio Juris, we hosted a symposium on the latest issues of the Leiden Journal of International Law, introduced here by Dov Jacobs. The first article, On the Functions of International Courts: An Appraisal in Light of Their Burgeoning Public Authority by Armin von Bogdandy and Ingo Venzke, discussed the functions of international courts in the international legal order beyond their traditional dispute settlement...
