This fortnight on Opinio Juris, Julian examined whether the US could legally deny Iran’s new U.N. Ambassador a visa to New York and provided his take on the three main arguments in favor of the visa denial. In a rare instance, Kevin agreed with Julian and elaborated with a post on the security exception in the UN Headquarters' Agreement. David Rivkin and Lee Casey surprised Julian with...
As readers no doubt know, Ukraine has accepted the ICC's jurisdiction on an ad hoc basis for acts committed between 21 November 2013 and 22 February 2014. The self-referral has already led to a good deal of intelligent commentary -- see, for example, Mark Leon Goldberg's discussion of the politics of an ICC investigation here and Mark Kersten's convincing argument that Russia...
So maybe the use of the Alien Tort Statute against corporations for overseas activities isn't fully dead. Yesterday, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York has revived In re South Africa Apartheid Litigation, a twelve-year-old litigation that just won't die. A copy of the opinion can be found here. Most of the opinion deals with whether a corporation may be...
I would like to continue the theme of the emerging convergence of investment arbitration and international trade. In my previous posts (discussed here and here) I discussed the prospect of using trade remedies to enforce investment arbitration awards. Another key example of convergence addresses the emerging trend of relying on investment arbitration to enforce international trade rights. ...
Last Spring, Temple Law School was pleased to host a two day workshop on the scholarship of one of international law's true giants -- Martti Koskenniemi (simply put, I'm a big fan). Organized by my colleague, Jeff Dunoff, it was a great event with a wide-ranging conversation launching off Martti's works in international legal theory, international legal history, fragmentation, interdisciplinary scholarship,...
I think it is fair to say that when Kevin and I agree on a legal question, there is a good chance there is a lunar eclipse happening or some other rare astronomical phenomenon occurring somewhere. But since both of us think that the U.S. has no international legal basis to deny a visa to Iran's new UN ambassador, this "fair...
There is an interesting interview with Professor Walter Kahlin, former Representative of the UN Secretary-General on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons, on disaster displacement over at the IPI’s Global Observatory. He discusses why the current international law regime on refugees is incomplete when it comes to displacement. He explains: Back in 2010, Haiti was hit by one of the most...
Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa Suspected Islamist militants killed at least 60 people in an attack on a village in northeast Nigeria, while a separate attack killed eight people at a teacher training college. Nigeria will mount a massive security operation to protect a World Economic Forum on Africa planned in Abuja next...
Just a quick note to flag for interested readers that Oxford has released a paperback version of my book, The Oxford Guide to Treaties. Happily, it is significantly cheaper than the hardback version -- it's listed for under $60 on Amazon right now. I hope that this edition will interest non-institutional buyers for whom the earlier price tag was a bit steep....
Event The British Institute of International and Comparative Law and Cambridge University Press invite you to the International and Comparative Law Quarterly Annual Lecture 2014, to be held at Charles Clore House at 5.30-7.30pm on Tuesday 20th May. Professor Mindy Chen-Wishart of Merton College, Oxford will deliver a lecture entitled: ‘Legal Transplant and Undue Influence: Lost in Translation or a Working Misunderstanding’,...
I fully concur with Julian's recent post about the United Nations Headquarters Agreement. There is no question that the US decision to deny Aboutalebi a visa violates the Agreement itself. But I've seen suggestions, most notably by my friend John Bellinger, that the US is not violating domestic US law because the 1947 United Nations Headquarters Agreement Act (scroll down) contains a "security...
