Ghana's President John Atta Mills has died, though details are unclear as to the cause of death. Foreign Policy has more here. Vice-President John Dramani Mahama has succeeded him, taking the oath of offices a few hours after the announcement of Mills' death. Fighting has intensified in Syria's Aleppo. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has joined the chorus of warning Syria against...
From the Guardian, an account that even an academic would have a hard time making up: Honduras may allow for extraterritorial appeals in some number of jurisdictions, amounting to "semi-independent city-states," established to improve investment appeal: The complex constitutional agreement under discussion involves Mauritius – an island 10,000 miles away in the Indian Ocean – guaranteeing the legal framework of the...
Our own Chris Borgen recently did an interview about Opinio Juris on a New York City Cable Show, Today's Verdict. You can watch it here. Chris talks about the origins of the blog, past successes and our more recent work (mostly for an audience unlikely to know much about international law). To top it all off, Chris looks great on...
Syria has rejected the bid from the Arab League offering an exit for President Al-Assad. Syria has warned of a chemical attack on invaders, according to Al Jazeera. Reuters reports that the West has warned Syria about their use. Foreign Policy analyzes the origin of the confusion surrounding whether and how Syria has threatened to use these weapons. Foreign Policy also offers...
You asked and we answered! In our recent readers' survey, nearly 70% of the respondents indicated that they have an interest in learning about new jobs in relevant fields of international law or foreign policy. We have therefore teamed up with JobThread to provide an Opinio Juris Job Board for our readers. This board is updated frequently and offers jobs with a...
Unless you have just started reading Opinio Juris or have been on a field trip in North Korea, you will have noticed that we recently held our first Readers’ Survey. We are very grateful to all 274 respondents who took the time to complete our questionnaire. Many also entered their name in the sweepstakes for the $100 Amazon voucher. We...
The Syrian army has launched fierce attacks against rebel forces, who had made a stronghold in Damascus. Fighting has also spread to Aleppo. The UN has extended its monitoring mission in Syria another 30 days. The Arab League has called for Syrian President Assad to resign and has offered Assad and his family a safe exit from Syria. Turkey has sent a battery of ground-to-air missiles to its border with Syria. China...
This week on Opinio Juris, Julian Ku discussed how the announcement by two US Senators of their position against ratification of the UNCLOS, has effectively sunk ratification for this year, and argued that the next administration should seek out bilateral agreements to protect commercial exploitation of the seabed on the high seas. Deborah Pearlstein argued why the US, even if it is not at war...
This may be a bit inside baseball for most, but the Pre-Trial Chamber issued an interesting decision yesterday regarding the Office of Public Counsel for the Defence's formal response to Libya's admissibility challenge. According to the PTC, the OPCD wanted some of the information contained in its response to remain confidential not only in perpetuity, but also ex parte. In...
As part of my research on international corruption in a forthcoming article in the Ohio State Law Journal, I came across some interesting studies on the relationship between corruption and democracies. One would think that democratic regimes are less corrupt than autocratic regimes because in democracies public officials are subject to political accountability. But the evidence suggests otherwise....
As we reported earlier this week, today the ICJ will deliver its judgment in the Obligation to Prosecute or Extradite (Belgium v. Senegal) at 3:00 p.m. in The Hague (CET). The reading of the decision will be broadcast live on the Court's website. France, the United Kingdom and the United States denounced China and Russia's veto on yesterday's Security Council resolution regarding placing...
[Sari Bashi is the executive director of Gisha, an Israeli human rights organization protecting the right to freedom of movement in the occupied Palestinian territory] Last week, a committee appointed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to recommend disposition of about 100 Israeli outposts in the West Bank established in violation of Israeli military zoning laws released its conclusions (English summary...
