I found much to like and dislike in this essay by Nigerian-American writer Teju Cole discussing his widely shared tweets on the Invisible Children Kony 2012 video. Here is one: Teju Cole@tejucole 1- From Sachs to Kristof to Invisible Children to TED, the fastest growth industry in the US is the White Savior Industrial Complex. Cole goes on to observe (rightly in my...
I don't have any particular insights to add on the very interesting and detailed roundtable discussion folks are having on the Lubanga judgment. But I can't resist pointing out this op-ed by Ian Paisley (the son of a leading figure on the Northern Irish settlement) in the New York Times slamming the ICC as a obstruction to national reconciliation and...
I agree with Professor Cheng that legal theory does not have to be predictive to be successful. But I wonder if he sets the bar a bit too low. In his previous post, he writes: Providing a framework of analysis to address international problems, to guide but not control, is perhaps the best that can be done. It may also be...
As I intimated in my introduction to this Roundtable, I was deeply impressed by When International Law Works (WILW). Professor Cheng’s accomplishment is to make legal theory -- even international legal theory – seem accessible, relevant and important. This may not sound like much, but I challenge you to work your way through Austin, Hart or McDougal/Lasswell and Koskenniemi and...
Opinio Juris is very pleased to host a Roundtable this week on Professor Tai-Heng Cheng’s recent book, When International Law Works: Realistic Idealism After 9/11 and the Global Recession (Oxford University Press). The Roundtable will proceed throughout the week and feature a fascinating and diverse group of discussants. Professor Cheng and I will kick off the discussion today, followed later...
There is much to admire in Alex Waal's criticism of the international community's kneejerk response to mass humanitarian atrocities. Once an abstract obligation, stopping genocide has become a political project. Building on the humanitarian interventionism of the 1990s, a vast anti-genocide movement, largely U.S.-based, is stirring students and movie stars alike. Its figureheads are Gareth Evans, a former Australian foreign minister and...
Fascinating article on how the U.S. government can, if it chooses, force almost any website with the ".com" suffix to shut down. ...
I feel like I have been working on this book forever, and my co-author John Yoo feels the same, which is why we are more than usually delighted to announce that Taming Globalization: International Law, the U.S. Constitution, and the New World Order, has been officially released. It is an attempt to pull together our thinking on U.S. foreign relations...
David French and Jay Sekulow respond to Bruce Ackerman's legal argument about the use of force against Iran with a factual claim: Iran has already attacked the U.S. There has, in fact, been an “armed attack” against the United States. Iran has been waging a low-intensity war against America and Israel — both directly and by proxy — for more than...
I leave it to Ken and others to weigh in on US Attorney General Holder's speech today at Northwestern. I did want to point out one early reaction from Professor Mary Ellen O'Connell of Notre Dame, who didn't exactly pull punches in her assessment of the Obama Administration's legal arguments. University of Notre Dame international law expert Mary Ellen O'Connell also...
Sometimes oral argument really does reflect what is going on in the Justices' minds. The Supreme Court will hear reargument in Kiobel next term (meaning October or so). The Supreme Court on Monday put over to its next Term a major case on lawsuits against corporations for human rights abuses in foreign countries, and ordered lawyers to come back with an...
Maybe, says M. Taylor Fravel at the Diplomat. In a recent press conference, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs appeared to take an important step towards clarifying China’s claims in the South China Sea – and suggesting what the line might not mean. First, the spokesperson, Hong Lei, distinguished between disputes over “territorial sovereignty of the islands and reefs of the Spratly Islands” and...
