[Robert McCorquodale is a Professor of International Law and Human Rights at the University of Nottingham UK, a barrister at Brick Court Chambers in London, and is the founder and principal of Inclusive Law, a consultancy which aims to bring together business, law and human rights. He was part of the legal team which represented the International Commission of Jurists...
Let me start this post with a short story, currently making headlines in my home country. In 2004, Swiss mining giant Xstrata won a public tender to develop one of the most ambitious mining projects in Peru’s history. “Las Bambas”, as the site was called, was supposed to be a model of sustainable development and human rights, featuring a new...
The FAO has asked me to post the following advertisement for five positions with the organization. Three are based at FAO headquarters in Rome; the other two are in Addis and Dakar. We are currently recruiting for five positions; the announcements are posted here. The posts are in: Development Law Branch, which undertakes normative work and supports Member States in developing their legislation...
[Katayoun Hosseinnejad is a PhD graduate from Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies and a university lecturer of international law in Iran and Pouria Askary is an assistant professor of international law at Allameh Tabataba’i University.] This post highlights some of the inconsistencies in the ICJ’s recent judgment on preliminary objections in the case of Certain Iranian Assets, which resulted in rejecting the...
Nearly 100 employees recently released an open letter to Microsoft demanding that the company cancel its nearly $500 million contract with the Army to develop an Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS). I will let the employees explain why: The contract's stated objective is to "rapidly develop, test, and manufacture a single platform that Soldiers can use to Fight, Rehearse, and Train that...
It is not often that the U.S. President and his chief trade representative debate fine points of international law in the Oval Office in front of the world’s press and senior Chinese officials. But President Trump and the U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer did just that last Friday when they publicly debated whether the possible US-China trade deal would be...
Amidst all the faux outrage over a Muslim Congresswoman's (admittedly problematic) tweet -- much of it coming from evangelicals who think all Jews will burn in Hell after the rapture and right-wingers who say nothing about blatantly anti-Semitic attacks on George Soros or Israel's support for the deeply anti-Semitic Prime Minister of Hungary -- here is your daily reminder of the...
It's been a while since I've welcomed a new participant in the blogosphere -- a sign that that the "market" for new blogs in international law is slowing down. But here is a happy exception, courtesy of James Gathii, one of the editors (the other two are Olabisi D. Akinkugbe and Nthope Mapefane): I am pleased to announce the launch today of AfronomicsLaw, a...
[Sam Zarifi is the Secretary General of the International Commission of Jurists.] Prof Harold Hongju Koh in his new book, Trump vs. International Law, has issued an explicit call to arms to American lawyers and bureaucrats to resist Donald Trump’s egregious attempts at dismantling the ‘postwar system of global governance’ and replacing it with ‘a far nastier, more brutish world, less respectful...
[Mark Wu is the Henry L. Stimson Professor at Harvard Law School.] A trade war rages between the U.S. and China. Trade conflagrations upend once-dependable trade relationships between the U.S. and its allies. On the surface, it may appear that faith in the utility of transnational legal process has collapsed in the domain of international trade. But if one examines beyond...
A couple of days ago, the OTP finally announced what we all expected: that it would not reconsider its refusal to open a formal investigation into Israel's attack on the MV Mavi Marmara. Dov Jacobs has already offered some thoughts on the lengthy document the OTP has filed with the Court explaining its reasoning -- what the OTP nicely calls...