In association with the International Commission of Jurists

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29 Jan

As we get closer to the review conference on the ICC, many of us have been watching, and perhaps commenting on, ways in which the US might or might not take part as an observer.  It seems certain that the US will be an observer at the review conference, and the primary issue on the table for the conference is the crime of aggression.  My own view of this is that the whole effort is a mistake - essentially for the reasons that Michael Glennon lays out in his fine new Yale International Law Journal article, The Blank Prose Crime of Aggression.  However, as I remark at the end of this post, whatever one's prescriptive views, descriptively the effort appears to raise questions about "contracting around" the Security Council in a changing world but un-amendable UN.
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29 Jan

Many thanks to Peter, Kal and Scott for their very thoughtful comments.  As Peter notes, The Art and Craft of International Law focuses more on process and design than on doctrinal issues.  Whether or not he is correct that international environmental law lacks common principles or norms that give it substantive coherence, the premise of my book is that it...

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29 Jan

[Major John C. Dehn is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Law, US Military Academy, West Point, NY. He currently teaches International Law and Constitutional and Military Law. He is writing in his personal capacity and his views do not necessarily represent the views of the Department of Defense, the US Army, or the US Military Academy.] The post-Boumediene habeas...

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28 Jan

For those of us living in the US, it is sometimes difficult to realize that interesting international legal events may also occur elsewhere; for instance, in the UK. Yet, times in the UK are very interesting indeed. This week alone the newspapers were filled with reports on the questioning of senior UK Foreign Office lawyers concerning the legality of the...

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28 Jan

One of the most fascinating topics (for positivists like myself anyway) is how customary international law incorporates a consensual element via the idea of persistent objectors.  Questions, of course, abound over why persistent objectors get an exemption from a customary rule, when subsequent objectors do not (unless other states acquiesce in the subsequent objector's departure from the rule, or take...

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27 Jan

This morning I had the distinct displeasure of being woken up by a phone call coming in on my Finnish cell phone, around 6 a.m. The caller turned out to be a Helsinki-based energy company, which started to promise me all sorts of cheap energy until I pointed out that I was currently residing in New York, that it was...

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26 Jan

    There are few international lawyers in the world who know more about climate change than Dan Bodansky. More generally, Dan is also an expert on international environmental law (IEL), and in this book he has distilled years of study and observation into a very readable yet sophisticated treatment of the subject. A successful overview and analysis of IEL is very...

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25 Jan

  How and why do international environmental norms arise? In what ways do they affect behavior? Do they change what states and individuals actually do, and, if so, why? How effective are they in solving international environmental problems? These are some of the questions I examine in my new book, The Art and Craft of International Environmental Law. My decision to write the book...

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25 Jan

Opinio Juris is pleased to be hosting this week a discussion of Professor Dan Bodansky's new book, "The Art and Craft of International Environmental Law" (Harvard Univ. Press, 2010).  Dan is well known to our readers as a frequent guest blogger and commentator on international environmental law, a field in which he is one of the world's leading scholars.  The...

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