Weekend Roundup: May 25-31, 2013

This week on Opinio Juris, we teamed up with SHARES Blog for a symposium on the intersection between the law of the sea and the law of responsibility, introduced here by Kristen. A first series of posts dealt with whaling. Natalie Klein contrasted responsibility regimes on whales and sharks. In his comment, Tim Stephens expressed hope that the ICJ will apply article 48 of the Articles on State Responsibility in the Whaling in the Antarctic case. Irini Papanicolopulu also discussed the international responsibility of non-state actors in the whaling dispute, which led Julian to ponder whether non-state actors are more important than states.

Further on living marine resources, Yoshinobu Takei asked whether the law of responsibility can play a role in international fisheries management. Ilias Plakokefalos commented that, as desirable as it is to apply the law of state responsibility to overfishing, it will be no easy feat. Tim Stephens’ comment pointed out how regulatory efforts to deal with overfishing tend to focus on specialized regimes rather than the law of responsibility. Anastasia Telesetsky argued in favour of imposing a due diligence obligation on flag states to avoid damage to marine resources. Ilias Plakokefalos raised two questions regarding the role of the flag state in terms of its international responsibility.

Finally, there was also a discussion of humans at sea with Seline Trevisanut’s post on responsibility for search and rescue operations, on which Tim Stephens provided an Australian perspective in his comment.

In other posts, Ken returned to his old favourite of EVOO, while Kevin brought you a breaking news update that the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber has rejected Libya’s admissibility challenge. Kevin also mentioned two unpleasant possibilities about the drone programme, and was disturbed by threats of genocide against Shia in Syria. A guest post by Onur Güven highlighted three challenging questions during the Third CWC Review Conference that recently took place in The Hague.

Finally, as always, we listed events and announcements and brought you the weekday news wraps.

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