It's bad enough that the Mafia's criminal activity accounts for 7% of Italy's gross domestic product. Even worse is that at least one major Mafia clan has discovered a new product to traffic — nuclear material:Authorities in Italy are investigating a mafia clan accused of trafficking nuclear waste and trying to make plutonium. The 'Ndrangheta mafia, which gained notoriety in...
It's probably not necessary for most readers of the blog, but my advice would be to save your $17.82. John Bolton's Surrender Is Not an Option is predictably devoid of perspective and makes for dull reading. Bolton has a massive chip on his shoulder (all the way back to his youth as a scholarship kid in high school...
In “The Concept of Law,” HLA Hart famously gave a back-handed defense of international law as law, but pretty primitive law in comparison to municipal law. He suggested, however, that international law may be in a “stage of transition” towards acceptance of various elements that would “bring it nearer in structure to a municipal system.” That was nearly...
Opinio Juris is pleased to welcome Professor John Knox as a guest blogger for the next two weeks. Professor Knox teaches at Wake Forest Law School and writes in the area of international environmental law and international human rights. His SSRN page is here, which includes his recent AJIL article critiquing attempts to enforce human rights obligations against...
But there are few fireworks in this Guardian-sponsored exchange. Bellinger comes off as a bit defensive and is trying to introduce a new argument: Let's move on. Here is the main thrust of the exchange: Philippe Sands: Are there any circumstances in which you could imagine the use of water boarding to be consistent with international law? John Bellinger: Again, we've...
I don't think so but some people do. Here's a bill that would fix the well-known operative flaws of the WPR. The measure corrects the WPR's failure to include attacks on US armed forces and citizens outside the United States among those situations in which the President can unilaterally initiate hostilities (compare the bill's section 3 to the...
I know next to nothing about UNCLOS, but I will still amused by one the reasons the Wall Street Journal invokes today against ratifying it — customary international law:The best arguments for the treaty come from the U.S. Navy, which likes how it creates a legal framework for navigational rights. The oil and gas industry approves of provisions that create...
I have been reading a fair bit lately by and about Albert Schweitzer for a writing project. One of the interesting segments of his life was his active role in the 1950s as an international norm entrepreneur hoping to change world opinion about nuclear testing. In many respects the public campaign to ban nuclear testing is quite similar...
The World Tourism Organization, that is. There's this interesting story in today's NY Times about how global warming may affect tourism, and what the WTO is doing about it (why, meeting in Davos, of course). And it's more than those ski slope operators in Pennsylvania that one has to feel sorry for. With air travel as a...
Justice Ginsburg recently gave an interesting speech on the topic of the role of dissenting opinions. In the speech, she briefly compared the differences between common law and civil law traditions in the drafting of decisions that I think deserves some discussion: Our practice of revealing dissents, it bears emphasis, is hardly universal. In the civil law tradition that holds...
Will it be a Happy Halloween for fans of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNLCOS)? I'm guessing yes. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee appears poised to report out the treaty favorably for a full Senate vote on giving advice and consent to U.S. accession to the treaty. You can listen to...
I want to post a public thanks to all who contributed to the great success of International Law Weekend which wrapped up on Saturday. My co-chairs Hari Osofsky, Nancy Thevenin and Patrick Reed, as well as the President of the American Branch of ILA, Charles Siegal, (who really was the fifth co-chair) deserve kudos, along with our terrific Organizing...
