I've got an op-ed in the NY Times today on the SB 1070 case, the title of which might have been "Let Arizona Law Die a Natural Death." In 750 words there wasn't room to engage the key doctrinal foreign relations elements of the case. This is central to the Obama Administration's case against the law: Immigration inherently implicates foreign...
Our own Peter Spiro has penned an op-ed in the NY Times about the upcoming arguments at the Supreme Court about Arizona's controversial immigration bill, SB-1070. Peter has posted on OJ about it here. Territorial disputes between China and Taiwan, Myanmar, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei may escalate based on Chinese development firms jockeying for position in the disputed islands. Despite tensions, China has lauded...
I am delighted to announce that over the next few days Opinio Juris will be hosting a symposium on what is increasingly called, following Tel Aviv University's Aeyal Gross, the "functional approach" to the law of occupation. Here is the description that was sent to the contributors: Occupation law has undergone significant evolution in modern times, and cases such as Iraq...
Last week, the good folks at the American Enterprise Institute and the Federalist Society hosted a book roundtable on Taming Globalization. In addition to John Yoo and myself, we were joined in a very lively discussion by Prof. Martin Flaherty of Fordham and Prof. Jeremy Rabkin of George Mason (with Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post as moderator). While John...
One of the most popular arguments made against the Second Circuit's interpretation of the Alien Tort Statute in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Shell is essentially a policy argument: How could it be possible for Congress to have intended to allow corporations to immune from claims of serious international law violations while at the same time allowing individuals to be liable? This...
The Supreme Court hears arguments in the Arizona SB 1070 case on Wednesday. I'll have some things to say on the merits over the next couple of days, but first a lament: why did the Court feel like it had to take the case in the first place? It could have waited. There are a bunch of cases making their way...
In my previous post, I discussed the Registry's report of its visit with Saif Gaddafi in Libya, which was posted on the ICC website and then removed without explanation a few hours later. It has come to my attention that the Office of Public Counsel for the Defence (OPCD) also prepared a report of that visit -- and that the...
This is our third installment of this new feature, last week's announcements can be found here. If you are organizing a conference or other event and would like to see the call for papers or the program announced on Opinio Juris please contact us. Calls for Papers The Helsinki Summer Seminar on International Law is planned for August 21-30, 2012 in Helsinki, Finland. The theme...
So reports Radio Netherlands Worldwide. The dispute, not surprisingly, involves Luis Moreno-Ocampo and Libya: This week the court’s public defender, Xavier-Jean Keita, accused chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo of siding with the Libyans and demanded he be removed from the case. In a court filing boiling with indignation, he accused Ocampo of making misleading statements during a visit to Tripoli this week...
I have uploaded a copy of the report, which was available for a couple of hours on the ICC website but then removed without explanation. (It's marked public.) Representatives of the Registry spent five days in Libya in late February and early March, so things could have changed significantly since that time. Nevertheless, the report paints an interesting -- and...
Continuing on last week’s discussion of the CIA’s General Counsel Speech, Ken Anderson posted about Daniel Klaidman’s guest post on Lawfare discussing the genesis of this speech. Another speech attracting attention was Deborah Pearlstein's discussion of a dinner talk by General Michael Haydn, CIA Director under George W. Bush, on interrogation and common article 3. If you’re losing track of...
I don't actually mean to express an editorial view here - my views on the role of social media, I've decided, are too mixed up for me to write a coherent post. But I did think this was funny. Thanks to my friend and colleague Juan Mendez and his ...
