In his recent guest post, Doug Cassel attempts to portray Chevron as the innocent victim of illegal and unethical conduct by the lawyers for the plaintiffs harmed by its predecessor's dumping of 16.8 million gallons of crude oil and 20 billion gallons of toxic waste into the Ecuadorian rainforest. Cassel writes as an advocate for Chevron, so he can hardly...
[Doug Cassel is Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School] In an environmental suit brought by lawyers for some residents of the Amazon, an Ecuadorian court last year issued an $18.2 billion judgment against Chevron. Readers who follow the case only casually may have the impression that this is a classic case of David vs. Goliath, and that Ecuadorian courts...
Welcome to the second edition of our Weekend Roundup. Last week’s edition can be found here. Last weekend, Claude Bruderlein’s guest post discussed the growing tension on the means and methods to provide humanitarian protection in Syria. Two posts built on posts from last week. Picking up on Anthony Colangelo’s guest post arguing against applying the presumption against extraterritoriality to the...
I'll have much to say about various legal aspects of the Lubanga judgment in the days to come, but I wanted to start by discussing the relatively narrow -- though critically important -- point that Jens addressed in his post: the dispute between the majority and Judge Fulford concerning the correct interpretation of co-perpetration in Article 25(3)(a) of the Rome...
With characteristic perspicuity, Professor Osofsky has offered a magnificent synthesis of my book and this week’s roundtable, all informed by her perspective about international law. I thank her for her remarks. Professor Osofsky raises a question of how my theory would help less powerful decisionmakers in the international legal system. Let it not be mistaken, and Profssor Osofsky does not...
[Hari M. Osofsky is Associate Professor and 2011 Lampert Fesler Research Fellow, University of Minnesota Law School and Associate Director of Law, Geography & Environment, Consortium on Law and Values in Health, Environment & the Life Sciences] I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in this exchange over Tai-Heng Cheng’s ambitious and thoughtful new book, When International Law Works. ...
I thank Professor Brown for his further application of the justificatory theory to the ICJ's advisory opinion on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, another incident not covered in my book. I am glad he finds the justificatory theory useful in explaining the Court's decision. As Professor Ku mentioned earlier this week, one test...
[Chester Brown is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Sydney] Thanks to Professor Cheng for his thoughtful response. As a follow-up comment, this discussion should not conclude without mention of another hard case, being the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion in Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons. In its advisory opinion of...
[Jens Ohlin is Associate Professor of Law at Cornell Law School] Cross-posted at LieberCode. So the ICC has released its first verdict and it only took 10 years. Most media reports are concentrating on the substantive crime – the use of child soldiers – because that issue has suddenly gained popular currency with the Kony2012 viral video. But the Lubanga decision is also...
I am grateful to Professor Brown’s careful summary of the thesis of When International Law Works. I should, however, make a few clarifying points about my analysis of some international incidents. Professor Brown, with gentlemanly understatement, notes that “some will have their eyebrows raised” by my analysis. Regarding Loewen v. United States, I confess I am rather ambivalent about the award. ...
[Chester Brown is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Sydney] In international life, decision-makers face difficult problems on a regular basis. What should decision-makers do, for instance, when international rules that “promote minimum world order and universally-desired values” run counter to, or threaten, “basic values or essential interests of communities” that those decision-makers serve (p. 2)? ...
My thanks to Professor Howse for his comments on When International Law Works. We have debated our respective views on state succession in our published scholarship for half a decade. Those exchanges have been intellectually rewarding to me, and so it is a pleasure to broaden our public discussions to international legal theory more generally. Professor Howse accurately...
