The Convention on Cluster Munitions, which bans "cluster bombs," received its 30th ratification yesterday when Burkina Faso and Moldava deposited their ratifications. The treaty, which was signed back in 2008, set 30 as the number of nations needed for it to go into effect. It will now become active on August 1, 2010. Apparently, this treaty was spearheaded by New...
Conservatives and human rights groups have rightly pummeled the new UN Human Rights Council as a deeply problematic institution, characterized by a strange obsession with Israel. But the Obama Administration joined anyway, despite criticism, and they won a small payoff this week in Geneva. The HRC finally got tough (well, at least they focused on) someone other than Israel. The...
What a shock: the Appeals Chamber has upheld Richard Harvey's appointment as stand-by counsel. I would engage in a detailed account of its reasoning, but the short decision -- 16 pages, only five of which are analysis -- provides none. Here, for example, is the AC's response to the heart of Dr. Karadzic's challenge, the irrationality of the procedures the...
John Bellinger makes a solid observation in the NYT on the Obama Administration's general approach to international law. The bottom line: Obama is basically the same as Bush (at least during the second term) on international law. Last month marked the one-year anniversary of President Obama’s first signature foreign policy initiative: the issuance of three executive orders ordering the closure of the...
Not everyone in international law is quite so fascinated as I with CDS spreads on Greek sovereign debt. However, the issues raised by the Greek debt difficulties and the urgent discussions in the Eurozone over a possible bailout, attendant moral hazard, and the like are far more than merely fiscal or monetary questions. Rather, this crisis is one of those...
The UN special tribunal to investigate the murder of Lebanese leader Rafik Hariri seemed like a good idea at the time it was established, back in 2005. Some folks claimed it vindicated the role of the UN in resolving this kinds of delicate political disputes. But the opposite has turned out to be the case. Half a decade later, however, the...
The Economist Intelligence Unit has just released its annual list of the world's most livable cities -- and my adopted home of Melbourne ranks third, behind only Vancouver and Vienna. It thus seems like an appropriate time to mention that Melbourne Law School is looking to hire new faculty at all levels, from Lecturer to Professor: This year we...
Dapo Akande, who seems to know more about head of state immunity than anyone else, has an interesting post on the recent ICC Appeals Chamber non-decision decision in the case against Sudan's President Bashir. He points out that the Appeals Chamber failed to even mention the question of head of state immunity, which is important in this case because as...
That's the allegation made by Dr. Karin N. Calvo-Goller, a senior lecturer at the Academic Center of Law & Business in Israel, against Joseph H.H. Weiler, a professor at NYU who is the Editor-in-Chief of the marvelous European Journal of International Law. In 2007, globallawbooks.org (GLB), a book-review website associated with EJIL that Professor Weiler also edits, published a negative...
I thank Professor C. Ford Runge for his comment on my article and agree with his analysis that places biofuels within a larger picture. From the Brazilian perspective, such heavy subsidies used by the United States and the European Union constitute the very “Gordian knot” of the negotiations in the Doha Development Round of the World Trade Organization. Naturally, that...
[C. Ford Runge is the Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Applied Economics and Law at the University of Minnesota.] Mairon G. Bastos Lima is to be congratulated for his coherent and ambitious proposal to rationalize the governance of biofuels through multilateral applications of the Rio and Good Governance principles. As he correctly observes, biofuels policies are highly nationalistic and lack...
[Mairon G. Bastos Lima is a PhD researcher at the Institute for Environmental Studies at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.] I thank the moderators of Opinio Juris for giving me this opportunity to reflect upon my article, entitled 'Biofuel Governance and Interational Legal Principles: Is It Equitable and Sustainable?'. Global climate change, energy insecurity, and the underdevelopment of rural areas have been crucial...
