Perhaps some OJ readers caught this abstract from the SSRN public international law postings this week, but if you didn't, I want to commend it to you: Eyal Benvenisti and Amichai Cohen, "War as Governance: Explaining the Logic of the Laws of War from a Principal-Agent Perspective." I have read it once, and plan to re-read it; I've long followed...
[Michael Lewis is a Professor at Ohio Northern University’s Petit College of Law and a former F-14 pilot for the US Navy.] Peter Margulies’s recent posts here at Opinio Juris and over at Lawfare broadly covered the issues raised and discussed at the Boundaries of the Battlefield symposium recently hosted by the Asser Institute at the Hague. I just wanted to...
Rep. Edward Royce, Chairman of the US House of Representatives' Foreign Affairs Committee, has urged China to participate in the arbitration proceedings lodged by the Philippines over their dispute regarding the South China Sea. The US military has started preparations for a drone base in Western Africa, presumably in Niger or in Burkina Faso. A judge in Guatemala has ordered Mr Rios Montt, a former dictator and...
In case you ever wanted a snapshot of the legal systems of the world, this handy chart is worth a look. If you follow the link you can get a brief explanation of the legal system of each country, including the historical roots. The orange is common law, the blue civil law, the green mixed, and the red...
Talks have broken down at the African Union summit in Ethiopia on plans to solve the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo.The UN wants to set up an intervention force to fight rebels fueling conflict in the DRC, according to a UN official.According to B’Tselem, a rights group, Israel is breaking its own rules of engagement by using deadly...
For those of you wondering how seriously the Chinese media is taking the Philippines' arbitration claim against China over the South China Sea (there must be at least two of you out there), here is an illustrative cartoon from a Chinese newspaper, "JingChu Times", in Central China (although originally from another publication). Although one doesn't need to read Chinese to get...
This week on Opinio Juris, Duncan was thrilled that the Supreme Court had finally reached a decision on whether to grant certiorari in Bond v United States, a case that requires revisiting Missouri v Holland. Julian though questioned whether Bond v United States will matter, although he gave his own two cents on the treaty power and federalism later. Julian clearly got more excited...
The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights while Countering Terrorism, Ben Emmerson, announced the launch of a special investigation into drone warfare and targeted killings yesterday. The United Nations is planning to consider later this year the scientific validity of a claim by China that a group of disputed islands in the East China Sea are part of its territory, although Japan says...
This article from the Global Times, a hawkish state-controlled newspaper in China, probably reflects a little bit of the official Chinese view on the Philippines UNCLOS claim. It also contains this troubling bit of analysis, from a Chinese scholar: The international court would not take the case without agreements from all parties involved, Dong Manyuan, a researcher at the China Institute...
I am remiss in not linking earlier to this excellent and absorbing discussion of the upcoming US Supreme Court decision in Bond v. United States at the Volokh Conspiracy. Rick Pildes at NYU is doing a nice job, but he is single-handedly taking on Professors Nick Rosenkranz, Ilya Somin, and Eugene Kontorovich on various aspects of the treaty power and...
This treaty was totally NOT on my radar screen. But as the NYT reports: More than 140 nations adopted the first legally binding international treaty on Saturday aimed at reducing mercury emissions, after four years of negotiations on ways to set limits on the use of a highly toxic metal. The treaty was adopted after all-night negotiations that followed a week of...
North Korea has said it would carry out further rocket launches and a nuclear test that would target the United States. Several European leaders have criticized British Prime Minister David Cameron's demand for radical reform of the EU and promise of an "in-out" referendum on UK membership. US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has decided to lift the military's ban on women serving in combat, a move...
