Newsweek published a long article today about a petition organized by NYU students, alumni, and non-law faculty claiming that it would be "unacceptable" for Harold Koh to teach international human-rights law at the law school. Here is a snippet: While working for the Obama administration, Koh was the most public legal defender of the president’s drone strike program. Last month, a...
Negotiations over the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) have highlighted the growing debate over investment arbitration. Last week the New York Times published an article summarizing objections to the TPP investment chapter. The article notes that politicians, law professors and liberal activists “have expressed fears the provisions would infringe on United States...
[Gabor Rona is a Visiting Professor of Law and Director, Law and Armed Conflict Project at Cardozo Law School.] The 9th Circuit issued a revised Opinion on March 27th in Maldonado v. Holder, a case about non-refoulement (the obligation not to expel, return or extradite someone to a country where they would be in danger of being tortured) and deferral...
I want to start off our conversation about the larger project Bianchi, Peat and Windsor have undertaken with their new book before introducing my own contribution to it. For years, the concept of interpretation has had a fairly narrow focus within the international legal landscape. It has almost uniformly been associated with a discrete set of objects -- treaties. From Grotius...
Nearly everyone treats Palestine's membership in the ICC as a done deal; after all, the UN Secretary-General (UNSG) has accepted Palestine's accession to the Rome Statute and the OTP has publicly stated that "since Palestine was granted observer State status in the UN by the UNGA, it must be considered a 'State' for the purposes of accession." But neither the...
Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa Gunmen from the Islamist militant group al Shabaab stormed a university in Kenya and killed at least 147 people on Thursday, in the worst attack on Kenyan soil since the U.S. embassy was bombed in 1998. Al Jazeera offers a context piece about why al Shabaab has...
This week on Opinio Juris, Kevin posted links to Justice in Conflict's symposium on Palestine and the ICC (1, 2), and commented on John Bellinger's op-ed on the prosecution of ISIS through the ICC. Following the University of Southampton's withdrawal of its permission for a conference on Israel, Kevin argued that Israel's defenders use double standards when it comes to academic freedom. He also...
[Craig H. Allen is the Judson Falknor Professor of Law/Professor of Marine and Environmental Affairs at the University of Washington.] The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (Tribunal) continued to develop the law of flag State responsibility in a 68-page advisory opinion issued on April 2, 2015 (Request for an advisory opinion submitted by the Sub-Regional Fisheries Commission (SRFC),...
The op-ed, which appears in today's New York Times, argues that the ICC is the most appropriate venue for prosecuting ISIS's many international crimes. I have great respect for John, who is unique among former high-ranking US government officials in his willingness to defend the ICC, but the op-ed makes a number of arguments that deserve comment. It certainly makes more...
I have to teach in 5 minutes so I just wanted to post a quick link and one comment on the Iran deal reached earlier today. Those who want to read the joint statement itself -- you can read it here. My first reaction, based on my primer of a few weeks ago, is that it sure looks like the deal is taking...
My contribution to the symposium is now available. Here is the introduction: I want to start with a prediction, one I’ve made before and still subscribe to: the ICC will never open a formal investigation into the situation in Palestine. People of all political persuasions seem to think that the ICC is somehow eager to leap into the most politicised conflict...
Does anyone out there in OJ-land know of a good book about the re-establishment of diplomatic relations? Ideally it would focus on the US (such as with Vietnam in 1995), but one discussing any country will do. I'm particularly interested in a book that describes the nuts and bolts of re-engagement: how the decision was made, how they selected the location of...
