I have often chided David Bernstein for his misrepresentation of the work done by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, so it is only fair to call out progressives when they, too, distort that work. Political Animal, which is associated with the Washington Monthly, is one of my favorite progressive blogs. But a recent post by Kathleen Geier that claims...
This week on Opinio Juris, we continued last week’s discussion on the US debate on ratification of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea with a follow-up post by Craig Allen, addressing the Convention’s extended continental shelf revenue sharing and its compulsory dispute settlement. John Noyes’ response to last week’s post by Steven Groves discussed why ratification would...
As Mark Kersten has already ably discussed at Justice in Conflict, the ICC released a statement yesterday regarding Melinda Taylor's detention. Ironically, although I think everything about the statement is profoundly devastating to the Court's credibility, I am actually slightly less bothered than Mark by the "regret" section of the statement: The ICC deeply regrets any events that may have given...
Since the late 1990s, thirty-nine nations have signed the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention. So far so good. But unfortunately, the treaty essentially is toothless, requiring nations to implement national laws that prohibit foreign bribery, but doing little more. Only a handful of countries are effectively enforcing their anti-bribery laws. Which ones? Well, the answer seems to...
The UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, summary or arbitrary executions has held that the US drone strikes flout internationally recognized human rights standards and may even be war crimes. The Washington Post has an opinion piece on the impact of drone attacks on diplomacy. The Atlantic has a follow up piece. The US is using Facebook to drive a wedge between...
[John E. Noyes is the Roger J. Traynor Professor of Law at California Western School of Law.] I do not share Professor Rabkin’s pessimistic view of the prospect of international arbitration of law of the sea disputes under the Law of the Sea Convention. LOS Convention tribunals and the law of the sea experts who serve as judges and arbitrators have helped...
[Editors Note: We inadvertently posted the incomplete version of this post by Jeremy Rabkin this morning. This post has his response to Prof. Noyes earlier post today. Sorry for the confusion.] [Jeremy Rabkin is Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law.] Craig Allen has performed a valuable service by reporting the range of sea-related treaties where we have already committed to...
The cover story in this month’s Atlantic magazine is an article by former U.S. State Department head of policy planning, former dean of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School for Public & International Affairs, former Harvard Law professor Anne-Marie Slaughter. Anne-Marie’s writings on international institutions and international networks are, I’m sure, known to many OJ readers. For this reason alone,...
[This guest post is from Jonathan Hafetz, Associate Professor of Law at Seton Hall University School of Law. He has also represented several Guantanamo detainees.] The Supreme Court’s denial of certiorari last week in seven Guantanamo detainee cases marks the end of an important chapter in the post-9/11 habeas corpus litigation. It leaves in place the D.C. Circuit’s narrow construction of the constitutional...
[John E. Noyes is the Roger J. Traynor Professor of Law at California Western School of Law.] My thanks again to Julian Ku for organizing this series on U.S. accession to the Law of the Sea Convention. I write to respond to Mr. Groves’s contention, based on U.S. experience in the Gulf of Mexico, that U.S. accession is not needed to further...
According to The Guardian, Libya is now interrogating Taylor and intends to prosecute her for violations of “national security” (read: doing her job and defending Saif) even if the ICC apologizes: Tripoli said on Wednesday night that Taylor, one of four ICC officers who were on an official visit to Libya, had tried to deliver documents to Saif that were not...
Here's an interesting report just out from the Open Society Initiative for Eastern Africa on the citizenship deficit in the wake of South Sudan's secession. The problem: several hundred thousand persons of South Sudanese descent resident in the north following the breakaway who now apparently have no status at all - ie, they're stateless. This is the definitive paper on...
