[William S. Dodge is Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Research at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. From August 2011 to July 2012, he served as Counselor on International Law to the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State, where he worked on the amicus brief of the United States to the Fourth Circuit...
This week on Opinio Juris, our thoughts are with our US East Coast readers affected by Superstorm Sandy. We hope you and your loved ones are safe and sound. Posting was light this week because of the storm, which forced us to postpone a symposium on Duncan Hollis' edited volume, The Oxford Guide to Treaties, to next week. But Sandy also provided inspiration...
I subscribe to the new conventional wisdom that Tuesday's result won't be close, but who knows? If it is, there's always the chance that voters among the 6+ million U.S. citizens living outside the United States will decide the election. Non-resident U.S. citizens are entitled under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act to cast absentee ballots in "the last place...
An Israeli censor has allowed the publication of an interview with the commando who killed the PLO's Abu Jihad in 1988. International human rights groups have welcomed China's decision to introduce a new organ donation system that will no longer rely on organs of executed prisoners. Sri Lanka has been pressed at the UN to prosecute war crimes. Jurist highlights the International Commission of Jurists'...
I blogged late last year about the UK Court of Appeal's judgment in Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs v. Rahmatullah, which implicitly repudiated a little-known OLC memo written by Jack Goldsmith that concluded “operatives of international terrorist organizations” are not “protected persons” for purposes of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention -- a provision that prohibits...
The annual CCIL conference in Ottawa is just around the corner. The program this year is fantastic (as always). Here is an overview from Prof. Fannie Lafontaine, one of the co-chairs: From the financial turmoil in Europe and the environmental disasters in Haiti and Japan to the surge for democracy in the Middle East and the resulting civil strife, international...
Attentive readers will note our calendar had indicated that we were supposed to start a new symposium today on The Oxford Guide to Treaties. It appears, however, that we are not immune from hurricane Sandy’s effects. I've received several requests for postponement from participants given this week's events and I'm also told that much of New York City and other areas in...
The United Nations is resisting calls by the African Union to end the arms embargo against Somalia. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking France’s backing over Iran. EU sanctions on natural gas exports have unintentionally strangled Iranian liquefied petroleum gas exports. As spending cuts have stopped insecticide spraying in Greece, years after the disease has been wiped out, cases of malaria have...
As a thought experiment, prompted by this week's experience with Hurricane Sandy: should management of disaster relief migrate to the supranational level? There seem to be two major justifications for a national disaster relief apparatus (a surprisingly recent innovation -- think Carter era, not New Deal). First are the economies of scale: money and expertise. A small state may not have...
Syrian airstrikes have resumed and 18 people have been found dead in the capital. Additionally, there are reports that a senior Syrian Air Force Commander was assassinated in Damascus. A former Chinese diplomat turned academic has argued that the dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands is a time bomb planted by the US that may go off unless the US does more to encourage negotiations...
The article, which is available in draft form on SSRN, is entitled "'One Hell of a Killing Machine': Signature Strikes and International Law." It is forthcoming in the Journal of International Criminal Justice as part of a mini-symposium on targeted killing edited by Cornell's Jens Ohlin. Here is the abstract: The vast majority of drone attacks conducted by the U.S. have...
International observers have criticized last weekend's elections in Ukraine citing systematic problems in the political and electoral system. US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton is in Algeria, discussing how to tackle the growing presence of Islamist rebels in Northern Mali. Japan is seeking an exemption on US oil sanctions against Iran. Germany’s Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble tells the UK: “EU needs you.” Presseurope covers the...
