The past few days has seen an intense internal EU debate over the stance the EU should take concerning the status of Kosovo. It is interesting to see how talk about international law was deployed as a tool of statecraft. As discussed in my last post, Russia has had a turn toward “legalization” as it became clear that the...
State Department Legal Adviser (& former OJ Guest Blogger) John Bellinger gave a major speech at Oxford University yesterday, entitled "Prisoners in War: Contemporary Challenges to the Geneva Conventions." If you care about U.S. detention policies, it's a must-read. For starters, it serves as a great encapsulation of U.S. legal arguments in defense of past and present detention...
Regarding Julian’s post on a possible Serbian suit in the ICJ over Kosovo, see also the following from AP and from AFP. According to these reports, the Serbs may seek a request by the Security Council of an advisory opinion from the ICJ concerning the status of Kosovo. They seem to want the Council to take up the...
Chambers and Partners has published their list of the top law firms for public international law. The top tier (or "band 1" as they call it): Clifford Chance Debevoise and Plimpton Eversheds Frere Cholmeley Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer Latham and Watkins Shearman and Sterling White and Case The full post also includes a list of top PIL attorneys who are not affiliated with the top ranking firms. Chambers' description...
This month, Kosovo is planning to declare independence with the support of the EU and the United States. Russia and Serbia are dead-set opposed and Russia in particular is making all sorts of ugly noises about any potential Security Council resolutions on this topic. Serbia is also getting ready to try to block independence, although it seems like they...
[We are pleased to have the following contribution from Steve Charnovitz of George Washington University Law School in Washington, DC. Prof. Charnovitz is a well-known expert on international trade. Some of his many publications are available here. ] On December 9, 2007, Pascal Lamy, the Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO), gave a thoughtful speech on trade and climate...
Today Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. You can read the Nobel Committee's presentation speech here, Al Gore's Nobel Lecture here, and the IPCC's Nobel Lecture here. A few quick thoughts on the award. First, scientists have become increasingly common recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize. ...
I’ve just returned from a week in Brussels where I gave a public presentation concerning the Transnistrian conflict in Moldova, with reference to the various other so-called “frozen” conflicts such as Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Nagorno-Karabakh. But the word I heard time and again was: “Kosovo.” Monday, December 10th, is the deadline for the negotiations on Kosovo’s final...
Now this story from the New York Times Magazine is what I call an innovative idea for lawmaking: When the New Zealand police force said they were open to suggestions about how to rewrite national policing laws, they meant it. In September, they posted the 1958 Police Act online and invited Kiwis and non-Kiwis alike to visit the site and type...
Doris Lessing received the Nobel Prize in Literature yesterday. Her Nobel Lecture is a joy to read. It's so easy to take for granted how much books enrich our lives. Lessing helps us imagine a world without them, a world that is a reality for many in Africa today. Here is a taste: Not long ago I...
The U.S. Supreme Court seems to want to answer that question, or at least some aspects of that question, by agreeing to hear two petitions from U.S. citizen detainees being held in Iraq by multinational forces. The consolidated cases arise from two lower court appellate decisions, both from the D.C. Circuit: MUNAF V. GEREN, SEC. OF ARMY and GEREN,...
Like many other geeky lawyer types, I have been scanning the arguments in the Supreme Court today for cluses about the ultimate result in Boumediene. But I couldn't resist posting about this neat article about legal questions arising out of European participation on the International Space Station. The space station currently exists as a legal patchwork of about...
