This article by Steven Rosen about the legality of a Palestinian state and a short response by Josh Keating touch on this issue. In short, Rosen argues for some independent legal standard for determining statehood (and Palestine doesn't meet it), such as the Montevideo Convention, while Keating basically argues that there are no such standards. A good and useful...
I don't mean to interrupt this great discussion of the "International Law in the Supreme Court" Book Discussion (to which I also made a very small contribution). But I can't resist a brief note on a case this term that promises to bring international law back to the Supreme Court, if only indirectly. Here is the NYT write-up: Menachem Zivotofsky was...
Bloomberg BusinessWeek offers what is slowly becoming conventional wisdom on the ICTY, at least, if not international criminal justice in general. Credit [] is due to the court, which focused on individual responsibility rather than collective guilt. This helped foster reconciliation among Serbs, Croats and Muslims in the former Yugoslavia. But beyond the Balkans, it would be a mistake to exaggerate the...
U.S. opponents of UNCLOS, whom I think have a number of quite sensible points, do need to explain how the U.S. is going to operate effectively in a world where all other major seafaring nations belong to the UNCLOS system. And they have offered decent arguments. Customary international law already guarantees navigational rights. Bilateral treaties, or even unilateral declarations, can...
Nicaragua may vote on a referendum on whether to seek damages from the U.S. arising out of the 1980s civil war. I have grave doubts about Nicaragua's ability to win such a claim (as well as its method of calculating damages), but it might be an interesting case. Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega has proposed a referendum on whether to demand $17bn...
Steven Groves of the Heritage Foundation passes along this useful review of the effect of UNCLOS ratification on U.S. development of its extended continental shelf. It argues that if the U.S. joins UNCLOS, it could be obligated to turn over as much as 7 percent of royalty revenue derived from development of its extended continental shelf to the International Seabed...
Or so it would seem, based on this analysis from the European Center for Law and Justice, a right-leaning public interest law firm. A proposed new law in Poland appears to ban abortion under any circumstance, thus replacing the current law, which allows exemptions for the mother's health and for cases of rape and incest. If, as the ECLJ argues,...
Having just returned from Asia, which is awash in disputes over territorial sea rights and exclusive economic zones, the U.S. domestic debate over ratification of the Law of the Sea Convention seems almost quaint. Unlike pretty much every country in East Asia, the U.S. does not have any serious boundary or other kind of dispute that is likely to be...
The International Court of Justice issued a "provisional measures" order today in a dispute between Thailand and Cambodia over a World Heritage temple located near or on the boundary between the two nations. The request for provisional measures was brought by Cambodia, which sought the withdrawal of Thai troops from around the temple. The ICJ granted this request, but went...
The U.S. government has recently announced it will recognize the Benghazi authority as the "legitimate" government of Libya. But is it departing from international practice or the international law relating to statehood and recognition in order to do so? I have to admit I haven't followed the recognition of state vs. the recognition of government issue very closely (OK, not at...
So I leave the country and the blogosphere for a few months, and what happens? (Well, beside that "war" in Libya), circuit courts have gone all negative on my argument against corporate liability under the Alien Tort Statute. In addition to the D.C. Circuit's recent decision, the Seventh Circuit (speaking through Judge Posner) went out of its way to reject...
For the next five months, I will be a Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer in Law at East China University of Political Science and Law in Shanghai. For a variety of reasons related to my status as a Fulbright Grantee as well as being a blogger living within the range of Chinese internet censors, I will take a sabbatical from blogging here...
