Weekend Roundup: July 20-26, 2013

This week on Opinio Juris, we teamed up with the American Journal of International Law to bring you a discussion on the two lead articles in their latest issue. Jose Alvarez, the co-editor in chief of the AJIL, explained their decision to run this online symposium, and discussed what ties both articles together, despite their differences.

First up was Leila Sadat’s article, Crimes Against Humanity in the Modern Age, summarized here. In his comment, Darryl Robinson traced the history of academic discourse on the policy element and highlighted the most recent decision in Gbagbo. Elies van Sliedregt argued in favour of the humaneness side of humanity to give the concept of crimes against humanity a modern meaning. Leila’s response is here.

Eyal Benvenisti then introduced his article, Sovereigns as Trustees of Humanity, in which he tests the limits of the traditional concept of state sovereignty in light of the intensifying interdependence between states. Armin von Bogdandy and Dana Schmalz want to push him further to a more pluralist and relative concept of state sovereignty. Peter documented how US decision-making, contrary to what we may think, already accounts for foreign interests. Jan Klabbers’ gripe was that a journal article is too short to let the argument unfold. Christopher McCrudden questioned the chosen theoretical foundations, and proposed alternative approaches.  Eyal’s response, using the recent ICJ hearings on Whaling in the Antarctic as an example, is here.

Kevin felt forced to violate Godwin’s law when he compared the reasoning in a new Al-Bahlul amicus brief to the Nazi Law to Change the Penal Code of 28 June 1935, and he pointed out more problems with the brief in a second post.

In a guest post, Solon Solomon and Jackson Nyamuya Maogoto analysed the ICC’s vessel jurisdiction under article 12(2) Rome Statute in light of the Comoros referral of the Mavi Marmara incident.

In other posts, Kevin welcomed the US State Department’s call on Rwanda to stop supporting the M23 rebels in the eastern DRC; Kristen discussed the most notable points of the ECJ’s most recent judgment in Kadi; and Chris pointed out the NewSpace 2013 Conference that is currently on in Silicon Valley.

Finally, Jessica provided daily news wraps, and there was some unintended hilarity courtesy of Google News about Libya’s snail pace on Saif.

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