Over at AidWatch (William Easterly's blog), guest blogger Moussa P. Blimpo puts up a post on the role of universities in development in poor countries, in Africa and elsewhere. There are a lot of tradeoffs, explicit and implied - should universal primary education take precedence over university education, for example. What is the role of universities in poor countries in...
John Bellinger has a nice op-ed today pointing out that the 112th Congress is on course to set a record for the fewest treaties ratified during a single session of Congress. Despite the presence of 59 Democrats, the Senate has approved only one treaty (a tax agreement with France) during the 112th Congress. The Obama administration must make more vigorous efforts...
The news out of The Hague today is the genocide convictions of Popovic and Beara, both of whom the ICTY trial chamber found to be key leaders of the Srbrenica massacre of 1995. Each was sentenced to life imprisonment, among the longest sentences for the ICTY. Lesser convictions and sentences were handed down to five other former Bosnian Serb officials....
I haven't had enough time to blog about Philip Alston's excellent report on drone warfare, but interested readers should check out today's conversation between Scott Horton and Alston at Harpers.com. Here's a taste of one of Alston's answers: Of course, calling something a war crime doesn’t make it so–the question is whether it is recognized as such under international ...
I couldn't make it to Kampala for the review conference (not that anyone invited me), but luckily, the magic of the internet means I don't have to go to find out how things are going. For two really different takes on the negotiations, I highly recommend you follow EJIL Talk's ongoing coverage here and Brett D. Schaefer (of the Heritage...
Now that the U.S. military has a CyberCommand, is it time for the U.S. to begin talks on a CyberWarfare Arms Limitation Treaty with Russia and other nations? (CALT?) The new Cyber Command chief says...
A few days ago, I recorded a conversation for Bloggingheads.tv with Mark Leon Goldberg of the invaluable UN Dispatch. It was a wide ranging discussion -- and long, 45 minutes -- covering everything from the Gaza blockade to the definition of aggression to drone attacks. Something tells me, though, that the only thing people will remember is my description of...
I know Ken's busy finishing his book and can't yet reply to Marko's remarkable post. (And personal congrats, Marko, on the lectureship. Nottingham is lucky to have you!) When he does, I hope he'll address the criminal-law aspects of his belief that self-defense justifies targeted killings outside of armed conflict. I have two scenarios in mind, borrowed and adapted from...
Despite the increasingly desperate nature of the attacks on Judge Goldstone, I never thought an academic institution would give in to the hysteria: In response to an enquiry by the Alternative Information Center (AIC) about its reported removal of Judge Richard Goldstone from the Board of Governors, Hebrew University of Jerusalem responded by email that: "The Hebrew University of Jerusalem...
OJ's good friend Marko Milanovic has offered a super-substantive response to my brief comments re self-defense in my not-yet-response to Professor Alston's report on targeted killing and drones. I will have things to say about that and also my reactions to the interior of the Special Rapporteur's report - happy to say that I avoided any $100 a day fines...
The Gaza Flotilla raid has launched an unbelievable amount of public commentary related to public international law because so much of the debate is framed around the legality of Israel's raid, its blockade of Gaza, etc. Some of the discussion has been interesting and useful (see again Kevin's posts on legality of the blockade). But then there is the continuing...
This would be amusing, were the Obama administration not backing Israel's insistence that any investigation into the attack on the flotilla be conducted (read: whitewashed) by Israel itself: When placed under journalistic scrutiny, the IDF is being forced to admit that its claims about the flotilla’s links to international terror are based on innuendo, not facts. On June...
