Many of you have probably seen the reviews of John Lewis Gaddis’ new biography, George F. Kennan: An American Life. John Gaddis was one of my mentors in college and graduate school, and I have really enjoyed seeing what I know to have been a labor of love reviewed so favorably. Congratulations John! Kennan, the man primarily known...
Dapo Akande has a typically excellent discussion of the surrender issue today at EJIL: Talk!, in which he agrees with Jens Ohlin and disagrees with me. In his view, Libya is entitled to challenge the admissibility of the case against Saif without having to first surrender him to the ICC. I find much of Dapo's argument convincing, but I am...
My friend and PhD supervisor Carsten Stahn has posted a very interesting discussion of Libya and the ICC at the Hague Justice Portal. Here is a taste: One possible option to reconcile domestic jurisdiction with accountability before the ICC may be a division of labor based on temporal jurisdiction. In line with the Council referral, the ICC enjoys ...
Over the last few months, as the eurozone crisis has gathered steam, I have wondered what the crisis means for the governance structures of the EU. One answer is, not much — the political leadership will somehow muddle through as it always does, on the basis of discretionary deals among the national leaders of European states. Then the institutional arrangements...
I've made more than my share of mistakes in my six years of blogging. It's painful and embarrassing, but it happens. All you can do is admit your mistakes and move on. Unfortunately, that is not the approach taken by the author of the terrible Mother Jones article I discussed yesterday. Suebsaeng doesn't believe that he made any mistakes. On the...
We have certain images in our minds about that first Thanksgiving. It usually involves bountiful harvests, amicable relations with the Indians, and prayerful thanksgiving to Providence for his manifold blessings. Well, it wasn’t quite that simple. Although there are various versions of the “first Thanksgiving,” one event that has a strong claim to it occurred at Plymouth, Massachusetts in the fall...
Many of you have probably already seen the fascinating story of how a North American Bird got the name of a European/Asian country. According to at least one explanation, the bird of the genus Meleagris that many of us will eat today first found its way to England, not via New World explorers and colonists but via Turkish traders...
Lord knows I can't stand Mitt Romney. And I have never bought the idea that Ahmadinejad has committed direct and public incitement of genocide through his inflammatory anti-Israel rhetoric. But this Mother Jones article is still staggeringly awful: When asked about Iran and Israel at Tuesday's CNN national security debate, on-and-off Republican front-runner Mitt Romney replied in his typically tough, ...
My friend Jens Ohlin -- Associate Professor of Law at Cornell and one of the very best substantive international criminal law scholars writing today -- has started a solo blog, LieberCode. Like his scholarship, the posts are top notch; recent entries address Libya and positive complementarity; the Florence Hartmann saga; targeted killing and citizenship; and the presumption of regularity regarding...
In my prior post, I suggested that the standards for aiding and abetting liability and corporate liability that emerge (or don’t emerge) out of the jurisprudence of international criminal courts are best understood not as customary international law, but instead, as a form of international criminal common law. One initial reaction to this argument might be if these rules aren’t...
Most commentators have assumed -- Julian included -- that Libya has an obligation under the Rome Statute to surrender Saif Gaddafi to the ICC before it can challenge the admissibility of the case against him. At The Multilateralist today, David Bosco quotes a UN diplomat who believes that Libya can challenge admissibility without first surrendering Saif: [Y]esterday, an extremely well informed...
Much of my work focuses on international sources theory, not exactly the material for a scintillating, timely blogpost, and I initially thought I should probably spare you my thoughts on it. (As a footnote, an early draft of my entry-level job talk paper was titled, “Taking Opinio Juris Seriously.” I understand this had some of the OJ members on hiring...
