Weekend Roundup: March 8-14, 2015

This week on Opinio Juris, we saw some analysis on the recent letter sent by US Republicans to Iran. Julian kicked off the discussion by pointing out the (unnecessary?) letter explaining the US Constitution and foreign relations law and Peter questioned whether the letter might be unconstitutional and even criminal. Julian offered further thoughts about why the Congress should be involved in the process, after Iran responded to the letter. Duncan spelled out the President’s options for dealing with Iran, with a focus on international commitments and domestic authority to commit the US internationally and Julian found a workaround toward a legally binding solution via a Security Council resolution on the matter.

Kevin added a few of his thoughts on the recent domestic conviction by the Ivory Coast of Simone Gbagbo and complementarity at the ICC, and offered a mea culpa on the Israeli attacks on Hezbollah in 2006. Finally, Tom Ruys offered a response to a recent discussion with his guest post on self-defense and non-state actors in the Cold War Era. We saw a lot of discussion on all the posts this week in the comments.

I wrapped up the news here and listed the events and announcements here.

Thanks for following us and have a great weekend!