This past month has been a busy one for Opinio Juris. We have hosted three separate symposia on a variety of timely topics. The first symposium dealt with the UK Supreme Court's recent decision in Vedanta v. Lungowe, which addressed multinational corporations' accountability vis-a-vis environmental harm and human rights violations. Important contributions were provided by Carlos Lopez, Robert McCorquodale, Doug...
[William Boothby is an Adjunct Professor of Law at La Trobe University, Melbourne. This post is part of our New Technologies and the Law in War and Peace Symposium.] In New Technologies and the Law in War and Peace we recognise the existence of a linkage between the military and consumer uses of a number of pivotal emerging technologies and consider how the...
[This post is part of our New Technologies and the Law in War and Peace Symposium.] Technology advances through synergy. Breakthroughs in one area of technology spurs developments in others. Advances in materials science led to the miniaturization of electronic components. Miniaturization led to a revolution in the architecture of computers. From ENIAC to iPhones. The computer revolution led to a revolution in, well, just about...
[Dr. Cassandra Steer is a space security and space law consultant, with 14 years academic experience in international law. This post is part of our New Technologies and the Law in War and Peace Symposium.] Whereas some readers might find Boothby’s volume “New Technologies and the Law in War and Peace” a little light on answering specific legal questions in the application of new military technologies,...
Imagine the following situation, S1. During a bitter and very one-sided armed conflict, the President of Alpha commits genocide on the territory of Beta. Alpha is not a member of the ICC; Beta is. When the President of Alpha attends a peace conference in Beta, Beta arrests him and prosecutes him for genocide. In this scenario, Beta has clearly violated international...
[Markus Wagner is Associate Professor of Law at the University of Wollongong. This post is part of our New Technologies and the Law in War and Peace Symposium.] The question of how law relates to technological innovation is far from new. For the most part, law has played catchup to technological developments – both in the civilian and military realm. While digital technologies are not exactly...
[Alejandro Chehtman is Professor of Law at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. This post is part of our New Technologies and the Law in War and Peace Symposium.] In New Technologies and the Law in War and Peace (CUP, 2018), Bill Boothby and his colleagues have written an important collection of essays exploring the regulation of new weapons systems under both the ‘laws of wars and peace’....
[Rain Liivoja is an Associate Professor in the TC Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland. He is currently a Visiting Scholar with the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. This post is part of our New Technologies and the Law in War and Peace Symposium] The interest of armed forces in...
[Professor Melissa de Zwart is Dean of the Adelaide Law School, University of Adelaide and an Editor of the Woomera Manual on the International Law of Military Space Operations. This post is part of our New Technologies and the Law in War and Peace Symposium.] Space is a fragile and challenging environment. It is, by its very nature, hostile to human survival and...
[Rob McLaughlin is a Professor of Military Security Law and Director of the Australian Centre for the Study of Armed Conflict and Society at UNSW Canberra.This post is part of our New Technologies and the Law in War and Peace Symposium.] As Bill Boothby has observed in New Technologies and the Law in War and Peace, ‘It is…difficult to determine what the future seems...
[Kobi Leins is an Honorary Senior Fellow at the University of Melbourne. This post is part of our New Technologies and the Law in War and Peace Symposium.] The machine itself makes no demands and holds out no promises: it is the human spirit that makes demands and keeps promises. In order to reconquer the machine and subdue it to human...
[William Boothby is an Adjunct Professor of Law at La Trobe University, Melbourne. This post is part of our New Technologies and the Law in War and Peace Symposium.] That the pace of technological advance has quickened markedly in recent years is well recognised. That the law struggles to keep up is frequently pointed out. Rather than wring one’s hands and...