In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Author: Duncan B. Hollis

22 Mar

Today's Financial Times has a story on how unhappy U.S. businesses have become about Chinese government restrictions interfering with their access to Chinese markets.  So, one can understand how U.S. exporters would welcome news that the United States and China are getting closer to including a Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT).  And, let's be clear, this would be the mother-of-all BITs, given...

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15 Mar

The general consensus among comments to my post last week on the previously-unacknowledged U.S.-Japanese security agreements was "no big deal."  These pacts reinforce an already well-developed practice of states doing deals--whether legally binding or political commitments--without U.N. registration or public disclosure.  Similarly, they reinforce existing views of Executive authority to conclude sole-executive agreements on defense-related matters for the United States.  So, if everyone's OK with such...

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10 Mar

Yesterday, the Japanese Government (now led by the Democratic Party after nearly five-plus decades of rule by the Liberal Democratic Party) confirmed that in the 1960s Japan and the United States entered into a series of secret defense pacts.  Specifically, a committee of scholars has identified various tacit agreements allowing U.S. warships to carry nuclear weapons into Japanese ports, granting unrestricted use of...

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28 Jan

One of the most fascinating topics (for positivists like myself anyway) is how customary international law incorporates a consensual element via the idea of persistent objectors.  Questions, of course, abound over why persistent objectors get an exemption from a customary rule, when subsequent objectors do not (unless other states acquiesce in the subsequent objector's departure from the rule, or take...

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18 Jan

We here at Opinio Juris are thrilled to welcome Jan Klabbers as our latest guest blogger.  Professor Klabbers is professor of international organizations law at the University of Helsinki, and Director of the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in Global Governance Research. This semester he's also a Fellow in residence at NYU's newly established Straus Institute for the Advanced Study of Law &...

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13 Jan

Back in 2008, I flagged the great service being done by the Squire Law Library at the University of Cambridge in compiling oral histories from some of the more eminent figures in international law. At the time, I focused on the recorded interviews with Sir Elihu Lauterpacht QC (although they'd also done one with Sir Derek Bowett, who passed away...

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04 Jan

Tommorrow, Opinio Juris is pleased to host a one-day discussion of the new book by Gregory Shaffer and Mark Pollack, When Cooperation Fails: The International Law and Politics of Genetically Modified Foods (Oxford, 2009).  Sungjoon Cho and Rebecca Bratspies will join us with guest commentary.  For those interested in joining what promises to be a great discussion, here's the abstract: The...

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01 Jan

Happy New Year to all.  For those of you looking for "new" things in international law this year, check out the newly redesigned website of the Private International Law office in the State Department's Office of the Legal Adviser (L/PIL for short).  It has links to other relevant websites and resources as well as listings of the status of U.S. treaties...

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17 Dec

I want to interrupt our Copenhagen focus to briefly flag a conversation that's on-going over at EJIL: Talk!  My Temple Law colleague, Jeff Dunoff, along with Joel Trachtman (The Fletcher School) recently put out a new work--Ruling the World? Constitutionalism, International Law and Global Governance (Cambridge, 2009), which is the focus of EJIL's latest on-line symposium.  Here's a description of the book project in brief: Ruling...

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08 Dec

The Guardian has a leaked copy of what it's calling "the Danish text" (see it here).  Apparently, this draft was developed by the Danes along with other developed countries including the United States and the United Kingdom in the hope that it might become the basis for whatever instrument emerges from Copenhagen.  As widely expected, the instrument is framed as a "political agreement"...

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08 Dec

I'm not usually in the habit of posting on job openings, but I thought this one might warrant wider exposure and expect it will be of interest to some of our more experienced readers (particularly those who've always dreamed of living in Vienna).  The IAEA is looking for a new Director for its Office of Legal Affairs.  Here's how the IAEA...

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24 Oct

Yes, says John Bellinger in Thursday's Washington Post: While it has done important work, the tribunal has largely outlived its utility for both sides -- and the Obama administration could face a significant international legal challenge if the tribunal orders the United States to make large monetary payments to the Iranian government. . . . When it was set up under the...

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