I'm pleased to note that Andrew Guzman is leaving Berkeley Law to become Dean of USC's Gould School of Law (see here for the USC announcement, and here for Berkeley's take). Andrew's a renowned scholar of international law, with major works on international trade, regulation, investment and public international law, including some seminal work on using rationale choice theory to explain the international...
For those of us fortunate enough to end up with a career in international law, we all have our mentors, our guiding lights. Mine was Professor Alfred P. Rubin of the Fletcher School. He died last week. I write to express my condolences to his family and friends and offer a few words on his influence on my life as well as...
Those readers who are members of the American Society of International Law know how critical the role of its Executive Director is and how great a job the previous director, Betsy Andersen did since taking on the role in 2006. Betsy left ASIL earlier this year to run the ABA's Rule of Law Initiative, and my former colleague from the State Department,...
Today marks the 150th Anniversary of the signing of the first Geneva Convention -- the Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field. 12 States signed it on August 22, 1864, and the treaty went on to have 57 parties before being replaced by later Geneva Conventions in 1906, 1929 and 1949. The ICRC...
A few hours ago, the NY Times broke a story that the United States views Russian tests of a ground-launched missile as violating the 1987 INF treaty, formally (and lengthily) titled, "The Treaty Between The United States Of America And The Union Of Soviet Socialist Republics On The Elimination Of Their Intermediate-Range And Shorter-Range Missiles". According to the story, the State...
Just a quick note for those of you who, like me, have a fondness for the Digest of U.S. Practice in International Law; the 2013 volume is now available on the State Department's website (see here). I find the Digest to be one of the great resources on U.S. views of international law; it regularly includes letters, reports, and other documents that...
With all the talk of the End of Treaties and Treaty Survival, it's worth noting that the wheels of multilateral treaty-making have not come to a complete stop. Earlier today, the ILO adopted a Protocol to ILO Convention No. 29, the 1930 Forced Labour Convention. On paper, the 1930 Convention was a success -- it currently has 177 parties. But it's...
Three quick (and thus tentative) thoughts on the BIG news out of the Justice Department a few minutes ago, announcing criminal charges against five officers of the Chinese People's Liberation Army for hacking various U.S. industries, including Westinghouse and US Steel. The Justice Department offered fairly detailed descriptions of how the hackers obtained information that had direct economic consequences for US companies, whether in...
The state of the international law academy in the United States is undoubtedly strong. International law and its progeny are no longer marginalized pieces of the law school curriculum as they were for much of the 20th century. U.S. Law Schools regularly offer international law, with a fair number now doing so in the first year (whether as a required...
AJIL Unbound, the new on-line companion to the American Journal of International Law, has begun to publish short essays this week for its on-line Agora, The End of Treaties? (see the original call for papers here). So far, they have posts up by Tim Meyer ('Collective Decision-making in International Governance') -- and Joel Trachtman ('Reports of the Death of Treaty...
Last week's NETmundial conference serves as a reminder of just how much the nature of cyberspace remains (at least theoretically) undetermined. We still can't agree on what kind of resource cyberspace "is": Is it a global public good as Sir Tim Berners Lee proclaimed (i.e., a res communis) or just a collection of technology subject to sovereignty regulation like so...
Last Spring, Temple Law School was pleased to host a two day workshop on the scholarship of one of international law's true giants -- Martti Koskenniemi (simply put, I'm a big fan). Organized by my colleague, Jeff Dunoff, it was a great event with a wide-ranging conversation launching off Martti's works in international legal theory, international legal history, fragmentation, interdisciplinary scholarship,...
