I've been so distracted with my own projects and with China's ADIZ that I forgot to note that Russia has been in violation of its obligations under UNCLOS since at least December 2. But that's OK, it seems that everyone else has forgotten this fact as well. December 2 was the date set by the International Tribunal for the Law of...
The WTO's new Director-General Roberto Azevedo is celebrating a rare event: The WTO's entire 159-country membership has finally reached a new multilateral agreement. This is the first time that the WTO's membership as a whole (as opposed to smaller groups of its member states) has reached an agreement since it was formed in 1994 and the first set of agreements under...
It looks like Russia is not going to comply with last week's ITLOS ruling, ordering it to release the Arctic Sunrise and its passengers upon payment of a bond. Russia is not going to comply with the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea's Friday ruling regarding the Arctic Sunrise vessel operated by Greenpeace, Russian presidential chief of staff Sergei Ivanov...
I don't have any insights to offer on the big news this weekend, that legally-non binding-UNSC-resolution-violating agreement in Geneva. But I did want to note one other big sort-of-law news item from the other side of the world: China's announcement that it is drawing an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea, including over the disputed Diaoyu/Senkaku...
[This Post has been updated]. One of the main benefits of attending a conference (rather than just reading descriptions of its proceedings), is the chance to have face-to-face exchanges with individuals you normally never get a chance to meet. One of the unusual aspects of the Asian Society of International Law is that it draws lawyers from many different Asian...
I've made the trek this week to New Delhi to attend the 4th Biennial Meeting of the Asian Society of International Law. I'll be presenting a paper on my favorite subject these days: The China-Philippines (Non) Arbitration. I've tweeted a few not very profounds thoughts on Day One here. AsianSil is quite a different type of meeting than the American...
I want to point readers to the recent issue of the Berkeley Journal of International Law which contains essays from a symposium last year on my book (with John Yoo) Taming Globalization. It contains essays from Friend of Blogs Thomas Lee, Tai-Heng Cheng, as well as our own Peter Spiro. All worth checking out....
Lyle Denniston is first out of the gate with his take on the oral argument in the much-anticipated U.S. Supreme Court decision in U.S. v. Bond. His general take: The argument in Bond v. U.S. (docket 12-158) reached the grand constitutional scale that has been its potential all along. At the end of an hour-long hearing, it appeared that the government might just have...
I agree with Peter that there is a move to universalize (through accretion) a norm against spying via Article 17 of the ICCPR. But unlike Peter, I think it will get nowhere. Instead, I was struck by how the German complaint against the NSA program has not really been phrased in terms of how it violates international norms or laws....
The government of Japan has issued a new policy authorizing its military to shoot down foreign (read: Chinese) drones that enter the airspace over the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea. China's Ministry of Defense has issued a statement suggesting that such an action would be an "act of war" and declaring that China's manned and unmanned flights...
Wim Muller, an associate fellow in international law at Chatham House, takes issue with my observation that China's rejection of Annex VII UNCLOS Arbitration may have influenced Russia's similar rejection of UNCLOS proceedings in the Greenpeace arbitration. Other commenters take issue with my further claim that Russia's rejection is another "body blow" to ITLOS dispute settlement. I offer my ("typically...
[Update below] It looks like China has started a trend. In a surprising statement (at least to me), Russia has announced it will not participate in the ITLOS arbitration brought by the Netherlands related to the detention of Greenpeace activists last month. “The Russian side has informed the Netherlands and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea that it...
