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According to WikiLeaks, Edward Snowden--responsible for leaking the NSA security program--is seeking asylum in some 20 countries including China, India and Norway. After the backlash coming from the European Union amid reports that the US was spying on the EU, President Obama tried to allay fears by saying the US along with all countries' intel services are involved in trying to...

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Every week, for as long as the show survives, I'll be blogging about Crossing Lines, the new NBC drama that features a team of detectives who work for the ICC. Today, my expert analysis of the second episode: It's about art thieves. Really. It's about art thieves. I'm not kidding. (And don't get me started about how the team threatens to let a wounded...

Tens of thousands of Croatians cheered the country's entry into the European Union. Ecuador's Foreign Minister, Ricardo Patino, has called on the US to explain itself to the world over its massive spy program. Millions of people have taken to the streets of Cairo and other cities across Egypt, demanding the resignation of President Mohamed Morsi amid sporadic violence that left several...

Call for Papers The NYU Journal of International Law and Politics (JILP) is currently accepting submissions for its Summer 2014 Peer Review Issue. This year’s peer review issue is dedicated to showcasing the work of emerging scholars who are early in their professional careers and making significant contributions to international legal scholarship. Articles submitted for the peer review issue are reviewed...

ABC reports: The McDonald's restaurant chain refused to open a branch in a West Bank Jewish settlement, the company said Thursday, adding a prominent name to an international movement to boycott Israel's settlements. Irina Shalmor, spokeswoman for McDonald's Israel, said the owners of a planned mall in the Ariel settlement asked McDonald's to open a branch there about six months ago. Shalmor...

This week on Opinio Juris, our main event was a book symposium on Katerina Linos' The Democratic Foundations of Policy Diffusion, introduced here (along with details on OUP's special offer to our readers). David Zaring and Larry Helfer kicked off the symposium on Monday, and Katerina responded here. On Tuesday, Eric Posner commented on the relationship between policy diffusion and international law, and Ryan...

[Katerina Linos is an Assistant Professor of Law at Berkeley Law] I am very pleased that Pierre Verdier, Harlan Cohen, and Roger Alford are offering the closing comments in the symposium on The Democratic Foundations of Policy Diffusion.  Of Pierre Verdier’s multiple contributions to the study of international networks and international economic law, I’ll single out his article “Transnational Regulatory Networks and their Limits,” as it is especially relevant to today’s discussion. In this piece, Pierre Verdier argues that Transnational Regulatory Networks may be ill-equipped to deal with the distributional conflict and defection risks that so often plague transnational cooperation. Harlan Cohen has written extensively about legal theory, legal history, constructivism, and fragmentation in international law. I’ll highlight his recent article “Finding International Law, Part II: Our Fragmenting Legal Community” as it contains the provocative claim that distinct legal communities are forming and creating deeply conflicting interpretations of international lawmaking. Among Roger Alford’s many contributions to international and comparative law, his article “Misusing International Sources to Interpret the Constitution” is particularly relevant today’s discussion, because of its fascinating analysis of the different actors who use foreign models to strengthen their arguments. These scholars’ posts raise three major questions:
  • Can diffusion through democracy help solve issues like global warming, issues that involve significant externalities and interdependencies?
  • What are the risks of diffusion through democracy?
  • Can we compare judicial borrowing to legislative borrowing? And how does all this connect to yesterday’s decisions on same-sex marriage?

I commend Katerina Linos’ book to our readers and echo the many positive comments that others in this book symposium have shared. Her theory of bottom-up democratic diffusion of norms addresses many of the concerns that have been voiced regarding the democracy deficit that occurs when policy elites borrow from abroad. I want to push Katerina a bit on the...