At the heart of Professors Hsu and Parrish’s excellent paper is the turn to transnationalism in environmental governance in North America. The authors point to both the potential increased demand for transnational litigation, due to the (political) unavailability of bi-lateral approaches, and the potential for increased supply of transnational solutions through the dismantling of jurisdictional and evidentiary barriers to...
Shi-Ling nicely describes the crux of our article, and the different perspectives that we brought to the project. Here – very briefly – I wanted to take a step beyond our paper and elaborate on my nervousness over using domestic laws, applied extraterritorially, to solve transboundary (or international) problems. What Shi-Ling accurately describes as my lament. I agree with...
The Canadian province of Ontario suing Americans over transboundary air pollution?! Are we serious? We are. A convergence of a political, legal, and scientific developments have made this hypothesized lawsuit possible – a lawsuit that would have seemed quite unlikely just a few years ago. Tobacco litigation in Canada signals the lowering of some jurisprudential hurdles, causation...
Now in its forty-eighth year of publication, the Virginia Journal of International Law is pleased to continue its participation in the scholarly debate of international legal issues through a new partnership with Opinio Juris. By continuing this conversation online, VJIL remains committed to staying at the center of a dynamic and interactive field of international legal scholarship. From transboundary environmental...
Opinio Juris is pleased to announce that it has established an informal partnership with the Virginia Journal of International Law to promote VJIL scholarship on Opinio Juris. This week we will highlight the three articles just published by VJIL in Volume 48, available here. The authors of those articles, Shi-Ling Hsu & Austen Parrish, Mark Movsesian, and Christiana...
It's been a difficult week for the global campaign to abolish the death penalty. First, Afghanistan executed 15 prisoners, ending a three year moratorium on executions:The mass execution took place Sunday evening according to Afghan law, which calls for condemned prisoners to be shot to death, said Abdul Salam Ismat, the prisons chief. During the 1996-2001 rule of Afghanistan's hard-line...
Yesterday's announcement that Al Gore and the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have won the Nobel Peace Prize came as a surprise to many. Just reading the comments over at the Volokh Conspiracy gives one a flavor of some of the skepticism. For those who do not follow these things closely, it is fair to ask, "What...
Here is the Nobel Committee's explanation of the award, which Gore shares with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:Indications of changes in the earth's future climate must be treated with the utmost seriousness, and with the precautionary principle uppermost in our minds. Extensive climate changes may alter and threaten the living conditions of much of mankind. They may induce large-scale...
Opinio Juris is pleased to welcome this guest post from Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch. He now maintains his own blog "The View from Geneva," on which he has cross-posted this contribution. No one’s talking about it, but soon — perhaps in early November — the UN General Assembly will be asked to approve the...
Congratulations to Opinio Juris alum Janet Levit on being named Interim Dean at Tulsa Law School. IntLawGrrls has the story here and the Tulsa Press release is here. Janet will be a terrific asset to Tulsa during this transition. We wish her the best in her new role! ...
I read with great interest the transcript of the oral argument in Medellin yesterday. From my perspective Justice Breyer had the best grasp of the potential impact of this case on international adjudication. Several times Justice Breyer asked about whether the rule we apply in this case will also adversely affect our recognition of decisions of other international...
This episode brings into pretty clear relief the potential downside of congressional foreign policymaking (front-page story today in the NY Times; you can find the resolution here). I'm surprised that the Bush Administration hasn't made some sort of constitutional argument against the measure. It might be a tough one to make, but that's hardly stopped this Administration from...
