I will refrain from adding too much to the increasingly ridiculous battle over Julian Assange's refuge at the Ecuador Embassy in the UK. Assange is acting like a paranoid lunatic and it is astonishing to me that so many folks who should know better instinctively side with an accused rapist whose main argument is that the Swedish (Swedish!) justice system...
While I am at it, I might as well flog my most recent piece on China's relationship with international tribunals and international adjudication more generally. This study, which attempts to document all of China's treaties that include compulsory dispute resolution clauses (excepting bilateral investment treaties), concludes that China is unlikely to become a strong supporter and participant in mechanisms of...
President Obama emerged from his campaign bunker to face the press, and he issued what the NYT seems to think is a pretty serious military threat against Syria. “We cannot have a situation in which chemical or biological weapons are falling into the hands of the wrong people,” Mr. Obama said in response to questions at an impromptu news conference at...
I've been trapped in an August blogging-slump. But I am roused to my keyboard by the surge of territorial disputes in Asia. China has aggressively asserted ever stronger and more expansive claims in the South China Sea, sparking dissension amongst the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and serious protests in Vietnam and the Philippine. China, Taiwan, and Japan are...
It's official. US ratification of UNCLOS is dead (at least for this year). And, perhaps more significantly, the treaty was sunk by two senators, Robert Portman and Kelly Ayotte, both of whom appear to be on Republican nominee Mitt Romney's vice-presidential short list. Their announcements, in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, brings the number of announced U.S....
Polls show that President Obama's handling of foreign policy is one of his advantages over Republican challenger Mitt Romney. And it will indeed be difficult for Romney to challenge President Obama on his war on terror policies. Not only are they seen by the public as successful, they are also not that different from policies Romney himself would pursue. Is there...
Interesting letter to the editor at the WSJ, defending China's claim to the disputed island/shoal/reef in the South China Seas. It is a good preview of China's international law argument as well as its view that UNCLOS is largely irrelevant to the dispute. To assert that China "invented" history is a result of ignorance of history. China acquired sovereignty over Huangyan...
Today, I hear there is going to be some decision from the U.S. Supreme Court on health care, or something. But there is something almost as cool going on down at the other end of the Mall: Sen. John Kerry's latest effort to win Senate advice and consent for the U.N. Convention for the Law of the Sea (and the...
I love soccer (excuse me, "football."). And I actually really enjoy tournaments like the Euro Championships or the World Cup because they remind me of the very powerful patriotic emotions that still exist, even in this supposedly post-national age, and even in the post-national E.U. Who needs a European Constitution? I will truly believe in the Euro-State when the Europeans...
OK, that is a little overdramatic. Still, the U.S. government has effectively switched sides in the upcoming Supreme Court case: Kiobel v Royal Dutch Shell. In the first incarnation of this case, the U.S. government had filed a brief supporting the petitioners and rejecting the lower court's holding that corporations cannot be sued under the Alien Tort Statute. But in a...
I wanted to thank Professors Allen, Kraska, and Noyes for their contributions to our discussion on US ratification of UNCLOS. I've learned a great deal from their posts and I hope our readers have as well. I wanted to remind our readers, however, that we will hear from two leading scholars tomorrow -- Jeremy Rabkin and Steven Groves -- who...
From the first class I ever took on international law, I've heard (mostly negative) references to the U.S. refusal to ratify the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. I've heard again and again throughout my studies about how the U.S. was shirking its global responsibilities as well as how the U.S. was hurting its own national interests by...
