In association with the International Commission of Jurists

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15 Oct

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...

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15 Oct

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...

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14 Oct

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...

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13 Oct

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...

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12 Oct

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...

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11 Oct

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...

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11 Oct

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...

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10 Oct

Meet Ann Coulter, Fox News media darling, best-selling author, syndicated columnist — and raving anti-Semite. From an exchange with Donny Deutsch on CNBC: DEUTSCH: Let me ask you a question. We're going to get off strengths and weakness for a second. If you had your way, and all of your — forget that any of them...

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10 Oct

can be found here. Lyle Denniston of SCOTUSBlog's report on the argument can be found here. My reading of the transcript, which is not as thorough as Lyle's actually reporting on it, suggests that there is substantial hostility to the direct enforceability of ICJ judgments (Scalia, Roberts, Alito) and somewhat less substantial hostility from those same justices to the...

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