Yesterday, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC) held the first of two hearings on U.S. accession to the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The hearing gave the Administration its chance to elaborate on why President Bush so strongly favors U.S. accession as soon as possible. You can access the testimony of...
Local actors are having a foreign policy field day lately. Yesterday, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger accepted an invitation from the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and addressed the U.N. General Assembly. You can watch the Governor’s speech here (or read a transcript here). Schwarzenegger’s speech focused on what California is doing about climate change. Emphasizing that...
It's the time of year when a fair number of second year students doing law review are contemplating the project that lies ahead -- drafting a note of their very own. Several students have asked me for advice on the writing process, and I've been pleased to refer them to a new book by Austen Parrish and Dennis Yokoyama,...
This Sunday, September 16, the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer will celebrate the twentieth anniversary of its conclusion. The Protocol has aged well, frequently celebrated as the most successful international environmental treaty. It has effectively phased out or controlled the production and consumption of most ozone depleting substances that threaten the ozone layer. ...
Those interested in a European perspective on public international law and EU law, may want to check out International Law Observer, a (relatively) new blog, with contributors from a number of Northern European law programs. For a sample, check out this post about the new EU identity. Hat Tip: Jacob Cogan at International Law Reporter. ...
That’s an argument that my colleague and friend, Craig Green, here at Temple is making with his work, Repressing Erie’s Myth, which will appear in the California Law Review next year (you can download a copy of it in draft form here). For years, the conventional wisdom suggested that customary international law operated as part of U.S. federal common...
Info Ops or “IO” has been a hot topic of late. In April and May 2007, Estonia claimed to have become the first victim of cyberwar, as denial of service attacks on its computer networks, disabled not just government websites, but those of its banks, universities, telecommunication companies, and hospitals. Estonia blamed the attacks on the Russian government,...
Hiring season is upon us here in the U.S. legal academy. For many "on the market," information is a precious commodity. PrawfsBlawg already does a bang-up job getting appointment committee members to identify themselves so candidates have some idea to whom they should direct their inquiries. But, what if you're an aspiring interational law professor? How...
It’s true – we may be witnessing the last days of the European Community. Moving on from the failed effort at devising a European Constitution effort two years ago, this summer has witnessed substantial progress on revisions to the European Union (EU), with the revival of an Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) and the beginning of negotiations for a new agreement...
Earlier this week, Prosecutors (finally) filed their introductory submission to the judges of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, supposedly identifying five suspects responsible for genocide and other atrocities committed during the Khmer Rouge regime. My colleague Jaya Ramji-Nogales (aka Lakshmi Bai) has the details over at IntLawGrrls. ...
On July 20, 2007, President Bush signed an Executive Order fulfilling the requirements of the Military Commissions Act (MCA) that he provide interpretations of the “meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions . . . for violations of treaty obligations which are not grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions.” Here are the most relevant portions of that EO --...
In 1999, Libya made a number of arrests in conjunction with the contraction of HIV by hundreds of Libyan children. In 2004, six of the defendants (five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian who, depending on whose version you believe, was either a physician or a mere trainee) were convicted of intentionally infecting over 400 children with HIV at a...
