In his book Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft, and World Order, former diplomat and Yale professor Charles Hill argues that The great matters of high politics, statecraft, and grand strategy are essential to the human condition and so necessarily are within the purview of great literature. Tolstoy’s War and Peace treats them directly. What has not been much recognized is that many...
Nicole Perlroth and David E. Sanger describe in the July 14 New York Times the increasingly global trade in computer vulnerabilities. The recent growth of this hacker market has been fueled by purchases by the U.S. and other governments. Can this market be effectively regulated? And if it is eventually regulated, would it be for the wrong reasons? Let's take a step...
The Open Society Foundations, the Global Political Trends Center (GPoT) of the Istanbul Kultur University in collaboration with Moldova’s Foreign Policy Association and the East East Beyond Borders Program of the Soros Foundation-Moldova recently completed a project comparing and contrasting the separatist conflicts over Northern Cyprus and Transnistria. The project team included policy experts from Turkey, Cyprus, Greece, Moldova, and me. My...
My thanks to Brad Roth for pointing me to a recent New York Times article on activists in Okinawa seeking secession from Japan. Okinawa is part of the Ryukyu island chain. The Ryukyu Kingdom was an independent or semi-independent state until annexed by Japan and renamed the Okinawa Prefecture in 1879. It was occupied by the Allies in World War...
Network from Michael Rigley on Vimeo. Via Boing Boing a very good short animation discussing data mining. This isn't focused on the NSA program that is currently the source of discussion and dispute but the broader issue of how both companies and governments are able to retain, purchase, and analyze massive amounts of data. For a deeper dive into data mining, I highly recommend...
As readers of Opinio Juris know, Ryan Goodman argues in a forthcoming article in the European Journal of International Law that: "the modern law of armed conflict supports the following maxim: if enemy combatants can be put out of action by capturing them, they should not be injured; if they can be put out of action by injury, they should not be killed; and...
A quick reminder to all readers that the American Journal of International Law is looking for submission on "Transnational Human Rights Litigation After Kiobel." You can see Opinio Juris' own discussion on the topic here. The June 15th deadline for the AJIL Agora is approaching. Here is the call for submissions, which is also available on the ASIL's website. Call for AJIL Agora Submissions: Transnational Human...
Former State Department Legal Adviser Harold Koh spoke yesterday at the Oxford Union. His speech, "How to End the Forever War?" (link to .pdf) is a reflection on the Obama Administration's foreign policy, in particular in regards to the rule of law. It is also a talk set to contrast the Obama Administration's approach to international law and foreign policy...
Today (April 12) St. John's Law School of Law is hosting a conference in New York in cooperation with NATO's Allied Command Transformation group entitled Cyberconflict: Threats, Responses and the Rule of Law. The conference brings together experts from the armed forces, academia, and law enforcement to consider issues at the intersection of technology, law enforcement, national security, civil liberties...
Lawyers take note: science fiction is become less fiction and more science every day. In the last year we have witnessed the launch of the first commercially built capsule to resupply the International Space Station (ISS), the announcement of significant private ventures aimed at eventually mining asteroids (1, 2, see also this), the announcement of a plan to send two people on a...
'Tis the season for year-in-reviews, for taking stock or where we've been. 'Tis also the season for making resolutions about what we want to do in the coming year. (And a week from now will be the season for breaking those resolutions.) But in the midst of the backward glances and hopeful promises, it might be interesting not only to make...
John Bellinger's op-ed in today's New York Times, "Obama's Weakness on Treaties," is clear on an important tactical issue on treaty passage but somewhat muted on a more improtant, strategic, issue. His main argument is that, given rising Republican intransigence against treaties--any treaties--, President Obama should be trying harder to pass treaties like the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons...
