November 5, 2013 is U.S. National Treaty Day. Well, not really, but it might as well be given how much treaties are going to be in the news tomorrow. For starters, the United States Supreme Court hears oral argument in the case of Bond v. United States (for the pleadings, see SCOTUS blog's as-always-excellent round-up). As we've blogged previously (a lot), the case...
Looking back at all the debates over whether the United States could have legal authority to use force in Syria, I was struck by the presence of two very different types of arguments about the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). For some, the R2P questions were interpretative in nature -- what did R2P mean (i.e., does it require Security Council authorization)...
I've been surprised how quiet the Obama Administration has been in terms of treaty actions in its 5 years in office -- you can pretty much count on one hand the number of treaties that have gone through the Senate Advice and Consent process (and nothing at all has happened this Congress). Now, some of the blame for this certainly...
Things are continuing to gear up here in the United States for the big foreign affairs law case of the year -- U.S. v. Bond, which, among other things may allow the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit one of its most significant foreign affairs law cases ever - Missouri v. Holland. Bond asks two questions: (1) whether the Constitution limits...
I've long admired Oscar Schachter's idea that there is an 'invisible college' of international lawyers operating across the globe, all of whom share a common culture of professionalism and purpose in advancing international law. Of course, with fragmentation the unity of that profession is more overtly stressed now than in the past (which, I suppose, should not be all that surprising...
Normally, we post our conference announcements weekly, but we just got word of one tomorrow that's worth flagging. The British Institute of International and Comparative law (BIICL) will be holding a Rapid Response Seminar tomorrow, September 11, from 4-6 pm to discuss 'Humanitarian Intervention, International Law and Syria'. As the title suggests, the conversation will discuss whether humanitarian intervention falls...
I've spent a lot of time thinking about treaties. And I've read lots and lots of them over the years. From time to time, however, I encounter something I find truly novel on the treaty front. A case in point, was this story in IT World yesterday. It refers to pending negotiations between the United States and Germany on an agreement...
For readers interested in cyber issues, I wanted to briefly note a Federalist Society Teleconference I was invited to participate in tomorrow at 2 pm (John Yoo is the other panelist). The session is titled, "Attacks, Exploits and Intrusions: When Is a Cyber Incident an Act of War? What Responses Are Warranted?" Generally, Federalist Society Telefora are open only to its...
International lawyers are used to explaining to skeptics the functional case for diplomatic immunity by emphasizing the benefits it provides. Here's the 5 second version: we want our diplomats to be able to communicate with their host States since the alternative to communication is often (and certainly used to be) conflict. To ensure open communication we need diplomats who feel...
Today, the U.S. Department of State released the 2012 edition of its Digest of U.S. practice in international law (for a brief history of these Digests see the accompanying press release here). Under the editorship of CarrieLyn D. Guymon, the Digest addresses a number of key international legal developments from 2012, including the U.S. response to the crisis in Syria...
Article 37(1) of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (VCDR) provides that a diplomat's immunity extends to cover "[t]he members of the family of a diplomatic agent forming part of his household ...
I usually defer to An and Jessica's (excellent!) work in flagging international law-related conferences and events. But, I wanted to call particular attention to a conference I just learned about that Duke Law School is co-hosting with the University of Geneva next month at the Duke-Geneva Institute of Transnational Law on the Role of Opinio Juris in Customary International Law. The...
