In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Asia-Pacific

05 Mar

Maybe, says M. Taylor Fravel at the Diplomat. In a recent press conference, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs appeared to take an important step towards clarifying China’s claims in the South China Sea – and suggesting what the line might not mean. First, the spokesperson, Hong Lei, distinguished between disputes over “territorial sovereignty of the islands and reefs of the Spratly Islands” and...

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02 Mar

The ABA Journal has a cover story about the threat posed to island states by climate change. This is a topic we have discussed on Opinio Juris at various times. Duncan wrote at length about the Maldives; I had a shorter piece here, and there are various references in the midst of other blog posts. The Journal article is long and...

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02 Mar

Like many readers, I never miss FP's online "Morning Brief," which provides links to numerous interesting international developments.  It's an incredibly useful and erudite feature -- which is why I was so surprised to see the following headline this morning: A U.S. court dismissed charges against the president of Sri Lanka for war crimes. Um, no.  The case did not involve war...

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15 Sep

Something I learned about while I was in China is that China claims, as a matter of international law, that it has "indisputable sovereignty" over most of the (oil-rich) South China Sea. This graphic illustrates the scope of China's sovereignty claims. China hasn't had a navy that could enforce this claim, until now.  So Vietnam and the Philippines have been...

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30 Aug

Apropos of Kevin's post below criticizing China's new criminal procedure law amendments, it is worth noting that some Chinese legal scholars are defending the consistency of such laws with international treaties.  China's draft amendment to the Criminal Procedure Law will further help protect human rights, and conforms rather than contradicts international conventions, legal experts in Beijing have said. The experts made the...

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03 Aug

A while back, I wrote an article on how states use the rhetoric of international law (specifically self-determination) as part of their broader foreign policy initiatives. Li Hong, the Secretary-General of China's Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, has an op-ed in today's China Daily that embeds law-talk (in this case the international law of outer space and multilateralism more generally) in...

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19 Jul

Having just returned from Asia, which is awash in disputes over territorial sea rights and exclusive economic zones,  the U.S. domestic debate over ratification of the Law of the Sea Convention seems almost quaint.  Unlike pretty much every country in East Asia, the U.S. does not have any serious boundary or other kind of dispute that is likely to be...

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