Weekend Roundup: November 23-29, 2014

This Thanksgiving week saw several posts of note on Opinio Juris. We hosted a Mini-Symposium on the latest article by James G. Stewart, The Turn to Corporate Criminal Liability for International Crimes: Transcending the Alien Tort Statute. First, Samuel Moyn discussed the ambitious past of corporate regulation, to which Stewart responded in hopes that the ideas set forth by both would be taken up for further critical research.

Next up was Steven Ratner, who reminded us to mind the gap between the ATS and corporate criminality under international criminal law. In Stewart’s rejoinder, he responded to several issues Ratner raised and agreed much more needed to be done with respect to question Ratner raised reminiscent of transitional justice and compliance in human rights.

Finally, Beth Stevens weighed in on the article and gave Stewart two cheers out of three–awarding two for his approach to developing a mechanism to hold corporations accountable (domestic criminal prosecutions), but withholding her last because of the perceived shortcomings of Stewart’s comparative ATS analysis. Stewart clarified his position in his response and offered a few more thoughts with respect to the comparative analysis. In conclusion, Stewart hoped that through academic discussions, cooperation among civil society organizations and domestic efforts that corporate accountability for human rights violations would continue to become a reality.

Another guest post came in from Gabor Rona, who shared his thoughts on Obama’s executive action on immigration, criticizing the position taken by Jack Goldsmith over at Lawfare and pointing out the ineffective role of Congress in passing immigration legislation.

As for our regular bloggers, Julian urged us to get real about the possibilities of an anti-corruption court–he is convinced it would never work. Julian is also convinced that it’s pointless for the US to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Kevin announced an event on the ICC and Palestine being held at Doughty Street Chambers on Tuesday, December 2nd in London.

As always, I wrapped up the news and also posted events and announcements.

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