I am teaching IHL in Jericho this week, so I don't have as much time as I'd like to weigh in on the increasingly surreal debate over whether the right of self-defense in Article 51 of the UN Charter permits the U.S. or Israel to attack a country that does not have nuclear weapons, could not build a nuclear weapon...
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...
I expect the legal issues arising out of a possible attack on Iran's nuclear facilities are going to get hotter in the coming weeks. Peter Berkowitz of the Hoover Institution offers this argument in favor of the legality of Israel's attack drawing from the doctrine of "preemptive" self defense (h/t Jack Goldsmith at Lawfare). The charter of the United Nations affirms...
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...
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...
That South China Sea dispute just won't go away. Not as long as there's still oil and gas down there...
It won't save his job, for reasons Julian mentioned a week or so ago, but it's still good news: Spain's top court acquitted renowned judge Baltasar Garzon on Monday of abuse of power by trying to investigate Franco-era atrocities, in a case that exposed deep wounds dating back to the civil war. Six members of the seven-strong Supreme Court...
All is proceeding as my colleague Anna Gelpern has foreseen. Indeed. Years ago, she mentioned to me in passing that the markets seemed remarkably unaware, or anyway remarkably sanguine, about the question of whether local law (e.g., Greek law) or foreign law (e.g., English law) governed as the choice-of-law clause for the vast tonnage of European sovereign debt. Today, we find...
I don't see how this is going to go as planned: More than 160 German financial services executives are willing to come to Greece in order to strengthen the Greek tax mechanism, according to a report to be published in the German magazine 'Wirtschafts Woche' ...
The Wall Street Journal's "Heard on the Street" column yesterday made an interesting comparison between sovereign bonds and corporate bonds. It pointed out that although in ordinary times, developed country sovereign debt is typically considered safer than corporate bonds of the same jurisdiction - the risk free rate of return, and the sovereign power to be able to tax, etc....
Yesterday the Ninth Circuit, sitting en banc, has unanimously embraced the doctrine of foreign affairs field preemption. It will surely prove to be a controversial blockbuster case for foreign affairs law, with or without Supreme Court review. The case of Movsesian v. Munich Re addressed a California statute, section 354.4, that authorized California courts to entertain various insurance claims brought...
