Thanks to a couple of kind retweets by Peter, our twitter guru, some readers might have noticed that I have joined the twitterverse -- @kevinjonheller. I don't know how often I will be tweeting; I much prefer blogging as a medium of communication. But feel free to follow me, if you are so inclined. That said, two caveats. First, I don't...
The leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah has said that Iran can strike US bases in the Middle East if Israel were to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. In other Hezbollah news, the group ponders an uncertain future if one of its two closest allies, President Assad of Syria, is defeated in the current uprising. Syrian refugees fleeing the country's turmoil have started arriving in European...
Rebels have hit army headquarters in Damascus planting bombs targeting high-level officers. More US drone strikes in Yemen kill at least eight, including five suspected of having al-Qaeda ties, while a Yemeni warplane missed its intended target and killed 10 civilians. Sudan and South Sudan have agreed to resume flights between capital cities for the first time in almost five months. Archbishop Desmond...
Calls for Papers The Southern Illinois University Law Journal is seeking scholarly legal articles from newer legal scholars for possible inclusion in a special Symposium issue, Guantanamo Bay: What Next?, on legal issues arising from the continued detention and trial of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Full submissions (in Microsoft Word) should be in by November 19, 2012. The International Organizations Interest Group of the American Society of...
A recent post at Mother Jones mentions my view of UBL's killing and provides Ken's brief thoughts on his death: Kenneth Anderson, a law professor at American University Washington School of Law, disagrees. "Being wounded does not necessarily render one hors de combat; hors de combat means they’re not actually posing a threat to you," Anderson says, citing moments where wounded...
France and the United Kingdom reported at the Security Council that all options are on the table regarding Syria. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced yesterday that he will speak on Iran at the UN General Assembly in a speech next month. An IAEA report has indicated that Iran has increased its stockpiles of enriched uranium and has doubled its centrifuges. Approximately 80%...
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameni has said that Iran will never pursue a nuclear weapon, but will not give up its right to peaceful energy at the summit for the Non-Aligned Movement in Tehran. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has asked the leaders of Iran at the summit to prove that the nuclear development in their country is for peaceful...
Of the 1500+ posts I've written for Opinio Juris over the past seven years, none angered my fellow progressives more than the post in which I claimed that the killing of Usama bin Laden was perfectly legal under international law. Here is what I wrote: To begin with, I think the applicable legal regime is international humanitarian law (IHL), not international...
French authorities have opened up a murder inquiry into the death of Yasser Arafat in 2004 at a Paris hospital, following allegations earlier this year that he may have died of polonium poisoning. India's Supreme Court has upheld the death penalty for Ajmal Kasab, the Pakistani national convicted for the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks. A Pakistani newspaper has reported that Al Qaeda recruited two Somali...
It is a draft platform, but these parts of the 2012 GOP Platform are certainly interesting. It appears to have strong language in favor of "American Exceptionalism" and American sovereignty. Under our Constitution, treaties become the law of the land. So it is all the more important that the Congress -- the senate through its ratifying power and the House through...
Basil Katz at Reuters has an article about Section 502 of the Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act of 2012. This section lifts the Central Bank of Iran's immunity under the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act of 1976 and effectively neuters the Bank's defences in a case pending before the US District Court for the Southern District of New York in...
In an effort not to stoke tensions any further, Japan's central government has declined authorization to the Tokyo Metropolitan Authorities to survey the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. Japan's territorial tensions with South Korea hinder their bilateral free trade negotiations. The EU has called on Gambia to halt executions of death row inmates after Amnesty International reported that 9 were executed last Thursday, and all remaining inmates are scheduled...
