According to a recent report, tens of millions of dollars from the CIA were delivered to the office of Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai over the course of decades, meant to buy US influence in Afghanistan. Syria's neighbors are wary of a US-led intervention, should the US decide to take military action in the face of new evidence of chemical weapon use by...
Not content to push border disputes with only Japan and the Philippines, China apparently has decided that now is also a good time to create a border crisis with India. Last week, Chinese troops apparently crossed over a disputed border to camp 20 km inside Indian-claimed territory in the remote region of the Himalayas (the Chinese deny the incursion has...
From the Court's press release: Today, 26 April 2013, Leiden University won the final round of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Trial Competition, English version, held in ICC Courtroom I in The Hague (Netherlands). Osgoode Hall Law School of York University (Canada) and Bond University (Australia) won, respectively, second and third place. The Best Speaker award went to Katherine Stewart of...
I cannot find the relevant document on the ICC website, but Kenya's CapitalFM is reporting that Judge Christine van den Wyngaert, sitting in the Trial Chamber, has withdrawn from the case against Uhuru Kenyatta because of concerns about the prosecution's behavior: In her opinion the prosecution failed to disclose to the Pre-Trial Chamber on the credibility of witness four and disclosing new...
This week on Opinio Juris, we continued last week's Kiobel Insta-Symposium. Quoting from his and John Yoo's Forbes contribution, Julian argued that the rejection of universal civil jurisdiction is common sense because it leaves the decision on foreign policy consequences of extraterritoriality to the political branches. He also drew our attention to two positive assessments of the opinion, by John Bellinger and...
Professor Craig Allen of University of Washington alerts me to this excerpt from the press conference held yesterday at China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It is the first time, as far as I know, that a Chinese government spokesman has offered a detailed explanation of China's legal position in the Philippines arbitration. It still doesn't fully make sense, or...
As members of Congress begin calling more insistently for some unspecified form of U.S. military intervention against the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, I admit to suffering the same doubt as Julian. What exactly is the legal theory here – under domestic and international law – that would authorize the United States to use force in Syria? There was,...
This week 170 garment workers in Bangladesh died after the Rana Plaza building collapsed. A few months ago 112 garment workers in Bangladesh died after the Tazreen Fashions garment factory was destroyed by fire. Both tragedies were the result of inadequate fire and safety standards. These tragedies could not have come at a worst time for major...
In the wake of a factory building collapse in Bangladesh, in which at least 273 lives have been claimed, many are calling for reform by Western high-street brands that rely on cheap labor as the accident reignited questions about the often lethal conditions in the country's garment industry. The Atlantic offers a piece about how garment workers are pushing for...
New evidence that Syria has used chemical weapons against insurgents have spurred new calls here in the U.S. for military action in Syria. Here is the LA Times (hardly an interventionist paper): An American or multilateral response should of course be proportional to the offense. That means considering whether chemical weapons were used against civilians or militants, and whether a "whole...
Yesterday, President of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, Shunji Yanai, announced the appointment of the final three members of the Annex VII UNCLOS tribunal. International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) President Shunji Yanai on April 24 transmitted a letter to Philippine Solicitor General Francis Jardeleza, head of the Philippine legal team on the arbitration...
French President Hollande is receiving a warm welcome during his visit to Beijing, which according to the Financial Times is a snub to the UK government which has not been high on China's welcome list after David Cameron's meeting with the Dalai Lama last year. US Treasury officials appeared before the House Appropriations subcommittee to push for a different allocation in US contributions...
