In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Recent Posts

29 Mar

[Andrew Guzman is Professor of Law at UC Berkeley, Boalt Hall and a discussant in the Opinio Juris On-line Symposium. He blogs regularly at the International Economic Law and Policy Blog] Eugene Kontorovich’s paper, Inefficient Customs in International Law is a welcome contribution to the growing analytical literature on customary international law (CIL). The question asked here is of...

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29 Mar

[Eugene Kontorovich is a Visiting Professor at Northwestern University Law School and a contributor to the Opinio Juris On-line Symposium] I would like the thank Peggy and the rest of the Opinio Jurists for providing this forum for the discussion of new work. I’m grateful to Andrew Guzman for providing comments, and even more grateful for providing charitable ones. Andrew’s comments...

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29 Mar

[John Knox is Professor of Law at Wake Forest University Law School and a discussant in the Opinio Juris Symposium] Hari’s paper describes the contributions law-and-geography and legal pluralism can make to understanding climate change litigation and, by extension, other important international problems. She contrasts this pluralist vision to a traditional view of international law, which is much more state-centric....

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29 Mar

[Hari Osofsky is Assistant Professor of Law at University of Oregon and a contributor to the Opinio Juris On-Line Symposium. She blogs regularly at IntLawGrrls] I would like to begin by thanking the Opinio Juris bloggers for their hard work in conceptualizing and organizing their inaugural on-line symposium. I very much appreciate the opportunity to participate in it, as...

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29 Mar

For some reason, the U.S. District Court for DC has not yet posted a copy of Judge Hogan's opinion dismissing lawsuits against Donald Rumsfeld and various U.S. military officials for abuse and torture in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thanks to Paul Stephan, I finally got a copy of the opinion, styled Iraq and Afghanistan Detainees Litigation, which I am posting...

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29 Mar

Tomorrow, in the final day of its ongoing session, the UN Human Rights Council will decide between two competing draft resolutions on the human rights situation in Darfur, Sudan. Unfortunately, neither draft goes nearly as far as the recommendations of the report presented to the Council two weeks ago by the Darfur assessment team headed by Nobel Laureate Jody...

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29 Mar

Abstract In an effort to elevate the international rule of law, international law scholars, especially since the end of the Cold War, have endeavored to determine how best to induce compliance, that is, how to encourage nations to obey international law. For all its advantages, this focus on compliance obscures the role of noncompliance in the international legal system. In the...

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29 Mar

Abstract The breathtaking growth of international criminal law over the past decade has resulted in the prosecution of Balkan and Rwandan mass murderers, the development of a substantial body of atrocity law jurisprudence and the creation of a permanent International Criminal Court with jurisdiction over genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The growth of international criminal procedure, unfortunately, has not...

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29 Mar

Abstract The questions asked by the organizers of this symposium on recent challenges facing public international law—whether international law is “too weak to make a difference” or whether its institutions are “invasive to the point of being undemocratic”— and the specific challenges mentioned by way of example (“terrorism, hegemony, illegitimacy”) all converge in the topic of this paper: an inquiry into...

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29 Mar

Abstract This Article explores whether and when rules of customary international law (CIL) can be expected to be efficient. Customary rules are often regarded as desirable because in certain circumstances, they promote the welfare of the group in which they arise. Unless these circumstances apply among states, the efficiency arguments for the legalization of customary norms do not apply. The Article...

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29 Mar

Abstract This thought piece will focus on the following question: What are the implications of conceptualizing of climate change litigation as pluralist legal dialogue? Part II provides the conceptual framework of the article by introducing and interweaving law and geography, judicial dialogue, and legal pluralism. Part III of the paper uses the example of California’s role in climate change...

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