I am not sure if it is a trend, but recently several nations have raised dubious legal claims over territory that was ceded away by treaty. For instance, Spain has zero legal claim to Gibraltar, as far as I can tell, unless the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht ceding it to Britain "in perpetuity" can be wished away. Bolivia has zero...
It is not surprising that the U.S. has not ratified the Maritime Labor Convention, which came into force yesterday seven years after its text was adopted by the ILO. As David Kaye reminds us, the Senate is not exactly in a ratifying mood these days. But it is worth remembering that treaty enthusiasts can't put always blame on the Senate's "sovereigntists" for...
The Second Circuit's decision in Balintulo v. Daimler* (already discussed at length by John Bellinger at Lawfare) is one of the first major U.S.court opinions to apply the Supreme Court's decision in Kiobel. It is pretty much a complete smackdown of the ATS plaintiffs, and for any hopes they might have that the Kiobel decision's bar on extraterritoriality for ATS suits...
The Faroe Islands has announced it has filed a referred the European Union to arbitration under the UN Convention for the Law of the Sea. Apparently, it is a dispute over herring. “The Faroe Islands have today referred the use of threats of coercive economic measures by the European Union, in relation to the Atlanto-Scandian herring, to an arbitral tribunal under...
Those international investment law nerds out there know that Article 54 of the ICSID Convention requires each state party to "recognize an award rendered pursuant to this Convention as binding and enforce the pecuniary obligations imposed by that award within its territories as if it were a final judgment of a court in that State." Many of you also probably know...
Opinio Juris is pleased to welcome Professor Neomi Rao of George Mason University School of Law as guest-blogger for the next week. With the Syria crisis re-emerging as a possible flashpoint for military intervention, we thought it would be interesting for Professor Rao to discuss her recent work on the status and impact of the "Responsibility to Protect" principle that is...
The U.S. Government has finally confirmed what other nations, and certain UN investigators, have been saying for weeks: the Syrian government has been using chemical weapons against the rebel opposition in its ongoing civil war and that at least 100 individuals have been killed. And the White House also repeats a version of the "red line" language President Obama first...
There has been a rightful flurry of media interest in the saga of Edward Snowden, the U.S. government contractor who is the apparent source of the leaks about the U.S. National Security Program's data mining surveillance program. One area of focus is Snowden's decision to take refuge in Hong Kong from a possible prosecution by the U.S. government. As I noted...
The indefatigable Benjamin Wittes at Lawfare has a short post describing a lively exchange between the Chinese and Filipino representatives at MILSOPS, an invitation-only off-the-record meeting of top military officials from the Asia-Pacific region, about China's nine-dash-line claim to the South China Sea. Apparently, this has been an ongoing debate at this annual conference. Last year, the Chinese representative presented this...
Irini Papanicolopulu highlights the important and sometimes central role that non-state actors have in the whaling disputes between Japan and Australia. Invoking the traditional lens of international law, she considers whether the actions of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS) or the Institute for Cetacean Research can implicate state responsibility. Her conclusion is properly uncertain given the murky relationships between Australia...
Last December, the U.S. Senate failed to give consent to U.S. ratification of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Since the election hasn't really changed the composition of the Senate all that much, I kind of thought this treaty was dead, or at least dormant, for a while here in the U.S. Maybe not! Groups opposed to...
Professor Stefan Talmon of the University of Bonn and St. Anne's College in Oxford offers one of the first serious attempts to defend China's position on the UNCLOS arbitration brought by the Philippines. In an essay published by the Global Times, China's hawkish state-owned daily paper, Professor Talmon argues that all of the Philippines' claims against China fall outside of...
