Does anyone out there in OJ-land know of a good book about the re-establishment of diplomatic relations? Ideally it would focus on the US (such as with Vietnam in 1995), but one discussing any country will do. I'm particularly interested in a book that describes the nuts and bolts of re-engagement: how the decision was made, how they selected the location of...
From April 17-19, the University of Southampton is scheduled to host a conference entitled "International Law and the State of Israel: Legitimacy, Responsibility and Exceptionalism." As the title indicates, the conference was always going to be controversial. (Full disclosure: I was originally scheduled to present at the conference, but pulled out a couple of weeks ago because I simply didn't...
Just in time for the activation of Palestine's membership in the ICC, over the next few days Mark Kersten's blog, Justice in Conflict, will be featuring posts by all of the people who participated in last week's roundtable at the LSE -- Mark, me, Kirsten Ainley, Dov Jacobs, Chantal Meloni, Leslie Vinjamuri, and Michael Kearney. Mark's introductory post can be found here. I...
Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa Kenya's government said it was "shocked and concerned" over the latest travel warnings issued by the UK and others and said security conditions in the east African country were improving. Islamist Boko Haram insurgents launched two deadly attacks on voters in northeast Nigeria on Saturday, police and a...
Calls for Papers Opinio Juris' own Peter Spiro will be the keynote speaker at the Skilled Migration Conference on Unravelling the Talent Tale: Skilled Migration Policies between National Images, Membership Bonds and Economic Priorities on September 15, 2015 at Sheffield University School of Law. The organizers are calling for paper considering a range of questions targeting the interrelation between attracting skilled migrants and redefining community...
In the last fortnight at Opinio Juris, we saw Julian critique M. Cherif Bassiouni on his take on the Amanda Knox case in Italy, arguing that she would indeed be extraditable to the US. Peter analyzed whether the Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz is in fact a natural-born citizen (spoiler alert: he is). Kevin posted his thoughts on the two-year anniversary of the...
I have been feeling a little guilty for blogging about the Amanda Knox case since it is more of a People Magazine topic than an Opinio Juris one. But just today, I realized that even someone as respected in the international law field as M. Cherif Bassiouni has opined on her extraditability in this OUP blog post from last April....
Just Security published a post by Laurie Blank, Geoffrey Corn, and Eric Jensen yesterday criticizing two surveys that are interested in how laypeople think about IHL's principle of proportionality. Much of what the authors say is absolutely correct, particularly about the need to recognize that assessing ex post the ex ante decision-making process of military commanders is fraught with difficulty and likely...
My friend Rogier Bartels published two excellent posts at Just Security over the past few days (here and here) in which he argues that it is inherently perfidious to launch an attack from a military object disguised as a civilian object. Just Security has just posted my lengthy response. Here is how I conclude the post: At the risk of sounding like an...
Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa Two Chadian army helicopters bombed Nigerian Boko Haram positions on Sunday, killing several dozen militants near a village on the border with Niger, a senior Niger military official told Reuters. A South Sudanese rebel group has freed 250 child soldiers it was using, including a girl as young as...
I just learned -- much belatedly -- that Chinua Achebe, the great Nigerian novelist, died two years ago today at 82. Here is a snippet from his 2013 obituary in the New York Times: Nadine Gordimer, the South African novelist and Nobel laureate, hailed Mr. Achebe in a review in The New York Times in 1988, calling him “a novelist who...
Short answer: yes. Ted Cruz is constitutionally eligible to run for President. As he moves to announce his candidacy tomorrow, the question is sure to flare up again. As most will know, Cruz was born in Canada. He had U.S. citizenship at birth through his mother and the forerunner to section 301(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. He also had...
