In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Recent Posts

19 Oct

YJIL has just posted the call for papers for the next Young Scholars' Conference. (Yale Law Students had guest blogged during the previous conference here.) I was on a faculty panel at last year's conference and was very impressed by the student presentations. It is a great opportunity for students who are interested in pursuing careers in international law. Here's...

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18 Oct

First, I’d like to thank Professor Paust for his thoughtful response to my Article. He is one of only a handful of scholars who have written on this topic and I am grateful for his taking the time to respond. Our work surrounding the question of customary international law (CIL) in relation to the individual has taken us to very similar...

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18 Oct

Christiana Ochoa’s article provides important insights into the relevance of various jurisprudential approaches to questions concerning the role of individuals and other nonstate actors in the international legal process. Her primary concern is whether individuals participate in the formation of customary international law. In sharp contrast to what she and too many others prefer to identify as a...

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18 Oct

My friend Olympia Bekou at the University of Nottingham has asked me to post the following conference announcement:The International Criminal Court and the State 9th November 2007 The Human Rights Law Centre and Methods and Data Institute at the University of Nottingham announce a multi-disciplinary conference entitled 'The International Criminal Court and the State'. As one of the four partners to the...

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18 Oct

First, I would like to thank Roger Alford and VJIL Editor-in-Chief Chris Ripple for the groundwork they’ve done to create this blogging opportunity. I’ve followed VJIL/Opinio Juris posts all week and have found them very informative. In my most recent article, The Individual and Customary International Law Formation, I propose opening a space for non-state actors, specifically individuals, in the...

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17 Oct

I thank Roger for his thoughtful comments. Roger himself has written a seminal article in this area, Federal Courts, International Tribunals, and the Continuum of Deference, 43 Va. J. Int’l L. 675 (2003), and I’m grateful for his kind words about my work. Let me try to address his points. First, I agree that Medellin addresses a...

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17 Oct

Mark’s excellent article provides a thoughtful analysis of Sanchez-Llamas and the significance of that case for the question of deference to decisions of international tribunals. There is much to commend about this article. I particularly like his analysis of the risks and rewards of the dualist approach and his forceful argument that dualism strikes the appropriate balance of...

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17 Oct

I’m grateful to the folks at Opinio Juris and VJIL for this opportunity to introduce readers to my article and to Roger for offering to serve as commentator. My article discusses the Court’s decision last year in Sanchez-Llamas v. Oregon. Sanchez-Llamas addressed the precedential effect of ICJ judgments in domestic courts. (By contrast, Medellin v. Texas, which the Court...

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16 Oct

As an initial matter, thanks to Professor Craik for his kind and well-thought out comments to our article. I should note that Neil has done some wonderful work on transnational environmental governance and the use of environmental impact assessments. Just as one example, his paper on deliberation and legitimacy in transnational environmental governance is excellent and well worth...

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16 Oct

At the heart of Professors Hsu and Parrish’s excellent paper is the turn to transnationalism in environmental governance in North America. The authors point to both the potential increased demand for transnational litigation, due to the (political) unavailability of bi-lateral approaches, and the potential for increased supply of transnational solutions through the dismantling of jurisdictional and evidentiary barriers to...

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16 Oct

Shi-Ling nicely describes the crux of our article, and the different perspectives that we brought to the project. Here – very briefly – I wanted to take a step beyond our paper and elaborate on my nervousness over using domestic laws, applied extraterritorially, to solve transboundary (or international) problems. What Shi-Ling accurately describes as my lament. I agree with...

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16 Oct

The Canadian province of Ontario suing Americans over transboundary air pollution?! Are we serious? We are. A convergence of a political, legal, and scientific developments have made this hypothesized lawsuit possible – a lawsuit that would have seemed quite unlikely just a few years ago. Tobacco litigation in Canada signals the lowering of some jurisprudential hurdles, causation...

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